


Dodecagon

by Veldeia



Category: Crusade, Stargate SG-1
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Linguistics, Trapped
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-10-06
Updated: 2005-10-06
Packaged: 2018-03-31 04:27:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 52,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3964369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Veldeia/pseuds/Veldeia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A dream come true turns into a living nightmare, worst of all for Daniel, as SG-1 are trapped inside an Ancient research base, and getting out depends on solving a near impossible linguistic puzzle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dodecagon

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place in Season 9, right after Beachhead. Includes a guest appearance of a characters from Crusade (Babylon 5's little-known spinoff), but is told entirely from Daniel's & Mitchell's points of view, so no knowledge of Crusade required.

  
"So, Sam. What would you say if I told you I've located what very much looks like an Ancients' science lab?” 

The look on Sam's face was worth seeing, and not least so because Daniel knew exactly how she felt. He felt the same way every time they encountered an unknown set of ruins, an amazing new artifact, or an exciting culture no one had met before.

“Daniel, I - really? How? Where?”

“Don't throw a party yet, it's not hundred-percent certain that it's what I think it is. It was quite a puzzle to begin with, though now it looks really convincing. See, I've only recently had the time and the chance to study all the things we found in the Avalon caves in Glastonbury.”

He might've had the time before, but with Vala constantly peering over his shoulder, he had preferred concentrating on stone tablets and vases and statues instead of the artifacts made of precious metals and jewels. Now she was gone. Of course, it was relieving, in a way, and to say that he missed being stuck with her would've been ridiculous. Still, he did miss her. He was angry at her for what she had done, although it had been her quick action in flying that ship into the nearly complete supergate that had saved them all. And he refused to believe that she might be dead. She was alive, out there somewhere, in the Ori galaxy, probably driving them all nuts.

“And?” Sam asked.

“So. There was that book that we found there which told the story of the Ancients, or the Alterans, an amazing thing in itself, but of course you already know all about that. Now, I had the time to read it through properly, and see what else it contained. In a chapter that told of several Alterans of note, there was a mention of a group of twelve, the Duodecim - that was the only name used of them \- who studied the secrets of the universe, time, infinity and eternity.”

“An Ancient research team! Of course they can't always have had all the knowledge we now know they came to possess - of course someone has invented all that amazing technology - though, this has to be a newer team, right? Since the Avalon caves are not nearly as old as many other Ancients' ruins and devices we have met?” she spoke vivaciously. “But - did you say you've actually found out where they worked? And it's right here, in our galaxy?”

Daniel beamed at her, completely sharing the eager feelings. “Yes - yeah, you see, the book, that was just the beginning of the puzzle. After I had found that one mention of the group, I started looking for other things that might be related to it. I came up with this.”

With a flourish, Daniel revealed something he had been hiding behind his back: a sizable silvery platter with a set of carvings and precious stones in its rim. Sam took it and frowned, gazing at her reflection in the gleaming surface.

“The carvings in the rim contain the word Duodecim, and then a set of six words, which obviously form a gate address. It took me a while to figure it out, since they're not the usual gate chevrons, but I think I have it now. The words refer to the Latin names for the constellations that correspond to the gate chevrons. As far as I know, no one knows the names for all those found on the gate, since there are many more than what one could learn through studying antique literature. But matching them shouldn't be that difficult with some help from someone who knows astronomy...”

“The names would be based on what the constellations look like from Earth's point of view, right? I'll just go fetch my star atlas, and we can get started!"

"Sam, wait. There's something else you'll absolutely have to see," Daniel said, and reached to take the platter back. "First, I thought this was all about the gate address, just a piece telling other Alterans where to find the place. But there's more to it than that."

He pressed one of the stones set into the rim, and the silvery surface lit up. "Here. Try pressing different stones. Just don't press that red one again, since that'll turn it off."

The previously mirror-like platter now showed a room containing a stargate. The room was so narrow that there was probably just enough space for the gate to open without vaporizing the walls. Since the view was from the direction where the DHD would usually lie, it was impossible to tell whether there actually was one, or how long the room was.

Sam pressed one of the jewels, and the view changed to another room. Its shape and size looked similar to the previous one's, but it was more like a laboratory, full of different kinds of devices of all sizes and shapes, computer screens and what seemed very much like sample jars and test tubes.

Another jewel, and another view, though the room was again identical in floor plan. An Ancient gateship filled most of it.

"Daniel - if you knew there was one of those in there, why didn't you just tell me right away?"

"Wasn't it a lot more fun to find out for yourself?"

She grinned. "Well, now that you mention it... I can just imagine all the things we could find there - I'm sure we'd get another ZPM, not to mention a lot of new technology that we've never even seen before..."

The fourth button revealed a room that resembled Daniel's office. It was full of artifacts, probably from hundreds of different cultures, books, and other methods of storing knowledge, such as hand-held computers.

"There are twelve of those rooms, just like there are twelve stones. Twelve workrooms, one for each of the Duodecim, each of whom had their own particular field of research. Still, I don't think that the gate room, for example, is where the stargate was first invented. After all, I'm pretty certain they already had that technology before they came to our galaxy. Perhaps they were trying to develop it further, somehow. Maybe the Duodecim were a team experimenting with high-tech that might not even work properly..."

"Daniel, we've got to get there. Let's figure out that address."

* * *

  
"Ancients' research base... You know, as much as I enjoy having the team back together because of it, I'm not sure we should go there. I'm afraid that even with Teal'c's help, I'll never be able to get either of you out of that place," Cameron Mitchell commented to Carter and Jackson. 

To say that he enjoyed the situation was a mild way to put it, really. After the weeks he had spent trying to convince the former members of SG-1 to return to that team, suddenly the team had come to him. They were not actually SG-1 yet, no patches, and the designation, though used, was still temporary, but for all intents and purposes, the team was there. Not because of what he had done, just all thanks to an Ancient set of silverware. Of course they were going, and he was every bit as eager to go as the two scientists. Even the rest of the crew in the control room looked anxious. 

Mitchell was sure he could hear a slight quiver in Harriman's voice as he declared his usual "Chevron seven locked."

The MALP was not affected by the mood. Its climb up the ramp seemed to take ages. When it finally entered the event horizon, Jackson and Carter had their noses practically pressed against the screen, waiting for the data to show up.

The screen stayed blank.

"Connection lost," Harriman told. "I'm sorry."

"It never made it through the gate at the other end," Carter said. "There's probably an iris of some sort there. Or then the gate's been buried or blocked and the place just isn't there anymore." 

Jackson shook his head as he glanced at the silver platter he had placed on the table. It still showed a mostly empty room with an inactive gate. "I was kind of hoping that the platter was a real-time thing, like a web cam, but of course it's much more likely that it just shows pictures - I mean, it doesn't even look like anything that carries a power source strong enough to receive a signal from a planet far removed from Earth. For all we know, that science lab could've been destroyed thousands of years ago."

"Hey, hey, we're not giving up yet, are we? It's still more than possible it's there. Ancients' stuff is built to last, come rain or come shine. Have you went through all the Avalon artifacts already? If there's an iris, maybe we just need a GDO," Mitchell suggested.

"Yes, that's exactly what I'm going to do. Look for a GDO. Back to the drawing board."

* * *

  
"This has got to be it," Daniel declared, holding out a silver plate, much smaller than the picture viewing platter, but clearly similar in design. 

Sam took the plate and turned it around in her hands. "It's got a set of stones, though there's just ten of them, and there's some text too. Can you translate this?"

Daniel nodded. "They look like random words. Aeternitas, astri, tempus, terra, infinitus, universitas... Wait! Universe, time, infinity, eternity! All the four subjects mentioned in the book are here. Could it be that simple?"

"That's the code we need to open the iris? The stones corresponding to those words in that order?"

"It's certainly worth trying."

* * *

  
"All right, I'm transmitting the code," Daniel said. He hoped there wasn't a particular position needed, a specific part of the plate that he should point at the gate, since he had no idea what that should be. He pressed the four stones that stood closest to the four words corresponding to the text. 

"That's it. Let's see if it worked."

The MALP rolled up the ramp again and went through the gate.

He was holding his breath, and he could guess that every single one of the crowd in the control room was doing the same.

"Receiving MALP telemetry," Walter announced.

"Yes!" Daniel exclaimed triumphantly, exactly at same time with Sam, though she sat behind the screen in the room above.

Mitchell's "Yeah!" came only a few seconds after them.

The view was familiar from what they had seen on the platter. A small, narrow room, just large enough for the gate. At the far end of the room stood the DHD, and behind it was a doorway.

"It looks safe. Atmosphere's normal, temperature at 80 degrees, and no signs of anyone there so far. General?" Sam turned to look at Landry, eyebrows raised.

He nodded, smiling. "SG-1, you have a go. We'll be expecting to get plenty of souvenirs."

"Sure thing, sir," Sam replied, and headed down to the gate room.

Sam and Daniel sprinted up the ramp, and though Mitchell and Teal'c followed more slowly, Mitchell's steps did have a clearly bouncy quality to them.

"It would appear Christmas has come early this year," Teal'c noted.

* * *

  
**Day One**  
  
Mitchell's honest opinion was that the gate room on the other side wasn't particularly exciting. It was small, so small that it made the stargate look like a huge, menacing thing. After all, once it would open, the vortex would fill most of the room and vaporize everything it encountered. The room was lit by a soft white glow radiating from the ceiling. At the far end of the room, which was actually quite near, was the DHD. Behind it was the opening to some other place, hopefully more interesting than this. 

Jackson lead the way to the doorway and through it, and was the first to say out loud what everyone thought. 

"This certainly wasn't on the platter!" 

The room was slightly larger than the one with the gate, and different in shape. The walls consisted of twelve open doorways leading into each direction, and thin corner columns between them. But what caught everyone's attention was the large thing that stood on a low pedestal in the middle of the room. It looked like a rectangular slab of ice, partially transparent and shimmering. It had no frames except on one side, which was lined by a silvery casing. Mitchell had never seen anything like it before. Not that it was a surprise, though. After all, this place was supposed to be filled with stuff unlike anything they had ever seen. 

"This device looks vaguely familiar," Teal'c noted. 

"I think so too, Teal'c. It's a bit like the quantum mirror we found from P3R-233 - though it's clearly not identical, and it's considerably bigger," Carter said. 

Jackson had already found something else of interest. Around the device were several tables filled with smaller things. Some of them were silver platters and plates similar to the ones they had found at Avalon, while others were, again, not like anything Mitchell had ever seen. He moved over to Jackson's side, to take a closer look. 

Carter, on the other hand, concentrated on the large device. "The quantum mirror's made of naquada, but I don't think this is - the material looks all wrong. And... wow! The amount of energy that's stored in here is just incredible," she muttered, as she knelt down to examine its foot and the pedestal. 

"I think there's a ZPM set into the base of it!" Carter added, reaching to try and pull it out. 

Jackson was holding a silvery-black something he had picked up. 

Mitchell glanced at the things on the table, and grabbed one of the plates. 

The heavy sound of stone grating against stone snapped SG-1 out of their eager exploration. With speed that took them by surprise, large slabs of dark stone slid down to cover each of the twelve doorways. 

Teal'c rushed to the nearest door. It was already too low for anyone to try and escape through it, so he stuck his staff weapon under it. That didn't slow down the inevitably closing door at all. Instead, the staff snapped neatly in half, and the part that remained under the falling stone was crushed into tiny pieces. 

The three other members of the team gazed at Teal'c, each with a dumbstruck and somewhat guilty expression. Each of them was touching something. 

"I will not ask which one of you caused this, for that would be difficult to tell, and irrelevant in the current situation."

* * *

  
"Don't we ever learn?" Daniel remarked sarcastically. 

Teal'c was right. Maybe it was Sam trying to get the ZPM out that had closed the doors, or maybe Mitchell had pressed a button on the plate, or then maybe Daniel had done something with this, whatever it was he was holding. It looked like a large antique belt buckle, except it was made of a silvery material like the plates and platters, with black decorations that might or might not be used to control whatever this was. So far, he hadn't been able to turn it on. Or maybe he had, but he just hadn't noticed it, and that had been the reason why the doors had closed. He couldn't know for sure. 

Daniel dropped the artifact on the table and turned to face the walls. As he looked, rows of text began to form in the previously smooth stone surfaces, as if carved by invisible, impossibly fast-working chisels, accompanied by a silent, scraping sound, like sand blown against stone. 

In less than a minute, each of the twelve door slabs was carved with a text in a different alphabet. He recognized some of them right away, such as Egyptian hieroglyphs, the heavily modified, yet Latin-based script of the nomadic people on P4T-3G6, something written with the modern alphabet in a language that he wasn't certain of, and one text in Ancient. That was the one most likely to tell how they could reopen the doors, so he decided to look at it first. 

"All right... I think this is just what we need," he said to the others. "It says that the room has been sealed to protect everyone and everything from the great power... No, wait, not power, it's... Energy, I think that's it. From the great energy of the - this is a word I've never seen before..." There was some stone dust on the text, and he reached to brush it off. 

As his hand touched the stone, there was a blinding flash of light, a searing pain climbed up his arm, and the jolt tossed him away from the wall. He lost consciousness before he hit the ground.

* * *

  
Jackson fell down right at Carter's feet, and she crouched instantly down to check him. 

"Rule one from now on! No touching! Hands off everything alien!" Mitchell yelled, as he ran closer. So far, every time someone had touched something in this room, things had taken a turn for the worse. Just how bad this was exactly, he couldn't be sure, before Carter told him. 

"He's stopped breathing. Pulse is erratic," she said, and without wasting more time, started mouth to mouth. 

Teal'c had knelt next to Jackson as well, his usually placid face showing open concern. Mitchell stayed a few steps away, with the oddest feeling that he was an outsider. SG-1 had encountered numerous emergency situations of several kinds out in the field, but never before in this composition, and under his command. Of course he was worried for Jackson, as one of the team, and as a friend, but Teal'c, Jackson and Carter had over eight years of common history. It would take a long time for Mitchell to become as close to them, if it happened at all. 

It wouldn't simply end here, he didn't believe that for one second. 

"Come on, Daniel..." he muttered, instinctively using Jackson's first name. 

Carter paused to check Jackson's breathing again. This time, she cast a relieved smile in Mitchell's direction, a smile he was quick to return. 

A few seconds later, Jackson's eyes opened wide. "God... What was that?" he gasped. 

"It seemed like a powerful electric shock," Teal'c suggested. 

"How're you feeling, Daniel?" Carter asked. 

"Sam, I'm... My hand... I don't think I can move my fingers. I can't even feel them." The way he said it suggested that it probably hurt like hell, too, but he just didn't want to say that. 

As Carter turned to take a look, Mitchell followed her gaze. The tips of Jackson's fingers were burned black, and the rest of the hand was red and swollen, seeping blood. He tried to raise his hand so he could see it for himself, but Carter pressed it down at the elbow. 

"Daniel, just take it easy. It doesn't look good, but I'm sure doctor Lam will be able to fix it once we get back. In the mean time, you'll have to do with my bandaging and pain medication." 

Mitchell grimaced. Once they got back. Getting back might depend largely on Jackson, since he was the only one who was able to read the texts on the walls. He just really didn't want to start kicking and dragging Jackson up to work again. They were not in a hurry. With the standard rations they had, they'd last a few days in here. Or maybe the way out would have nothing at all to do with the writings. Mitchell would do his best to figure that out. If there was another way out, he'd find it. 

Apparently, Jackson didn't need anyone to tell him what to do. Despite the fact that he kept biting his teeth together, grimacing and occasionally grunting all the way through Carter's bandaging the burned skin of his hand, he started struggling to get up as soon as she was done. Both Teal'c and Carter tried to restrain him. 

"Sam, Teal'c," Jackson resisted. "That Ancient text's important. It might just be the only thing that'll tell us how to get out. I've got to finish reading it! Please." 

Mitchell frowned, but he did agree with Jackson. "I'm sorry, guys, but I think he really should finish the translation." 

"That may indeed be true," Teal'c said, and since Sam nodded as well, the two of them helped Jackson up. 

"Just stay far from that wall," Mitchell added.

* * *

  
Standing up made Daniel feel light-headed, and he had the sickening feeling that his heart kept skipping beats. His hand was on fire. Sam hadn't even allowed him to look at it properly, so it had to be bad. Really bad. Third degree burns, most likely. Now it was entirely covered in bandages. So much for taking notes while translating, he'd certainly not be able to hold a pen. 

"All right," Daniel turned his attention to the text. Nothing like an all-important translation to take his thoughts away from all the discomfort. "So, yes. Just like I thought. We've been sealed in to protect everyone from the great power of the - something - an unknown word - that may be released in... tests, or tries, I think it means experiments. We're caught in an Ancient isolation lab." 

"Is that all there is?" Teal'c asked. 

"No, it goes on. It says that once the experiments are concluded and it is safe to leave the room, one must simply touch the walls from first to last. Of course, there's a warning at the end: 'Beware, you who come with the wrong intentions, lacking the wisdom and knowledge that is required.' Apparently, that was my problem. Didn't have enough wisdom and knowledge." 

"You simply touched the wrong wall," Sam said. "So, the Ancient text can't be the first one... From first to last - I guess that means putting them in chronological order, and some of the other texts has to be older than it. So, it's a puzzle, and we've just got to figure out the right order." 

"...and if we don't get it right, then the walls will electrocute us, or something equally unpleasant," Mitchell grimaced. 

"Yeah..." Daniel breathed, hanging his head. "And not that I'd like to sound depressing, but I'm not sure I can translate all of them. I think - and I'm not even sure - that that one over there is in Polish, and this here is a form of Brahmi script unfamiliar to me - and there are a few texts written in scripts I don't think I've met before. Translating them without any idea of context is, well, as much as I hate to say it, pretty much impossible." 

"Still, Daniel, you don't actually need to translate them all completely, do you? We just need to know the order, so can't you deduce which one came first?" Sam tried to sound encouraging. 

"Maybe. But I can't be certain. Take this hieroglyphic text, for example. Now, I recognized it right away as the Great Hymn to the Aten from the 18th dynasty, a well known text. But had I not known the alphabet well enough to read it and recognize the text... The hieroglyphic writing was in use for thousands of years. Just knowing that this is something written in ancient Egyptian would not be enough to place it chronologically among the texts. And all I can say about that Brahmi text is that such a script was used sometime between 5th century BC and 4th century AD... And that's talking about a script that I can recognize, unlike several others." 

"Jackson, you can figure this out. You're the best there is for a job like this," Mitchell told him. "Just rest a while before you get to work, and take your time, we're not in a hurry." 

Daniel sighed and sat down on the floor. Sam offered him a blanket, though he wasn't feeling particularly cold. 

"Sam... I really don't think I can translate it all," he told her. "In the end, it might come down to trial and error... Just trying to touch the walls in some possible order, hoping that it's the right one, and that no one gets killed if it's not."

* * *

  
Trapped. Caught. Imprisoned. Mitchell had been in numerous tough situations, but this was something completely new. Stuck inside an alien research facility, a room filled with alien devices and things, but strictly decided not to touch any of them. Just leaning against a wall in this place might be lethal. There was no furniture in the room aside from the tables around the large block of ice, and since the tables were full of stuff, he thought it best to stay away from them. As for the pedestal under the ice slab, it was too near to the device itself. 

He could either sit on the floor or, when he grew too anxious, pace around the room, keeping a safe distance to the walls.   
  
Mitchell had tried to think of possible ways of getting out. He had walked around the room so many times already that he was afraid he'd start wearing a canyon to the floor. At least that'd make it more interesting. He had already examined every inch of it, and it was all the same, a kind of dark-brown rock, just like the walls.  
  
The ceiling was different, glowing with white light. He had located a circular area in it that wasn't glowing, and looked different from the rest. It might be a hatch of some kind, but it was so high up that reaching it would require either a ladder or some amazing acrobatics, a real human pyramid. And that would be very hard to do without touching the walls.  
  
He tried to cling to the faint hope that the people from the SGC would come and get them out. SG-1 was already late from their first scheduled check with the folks back at home. Mitchell hadn't asked Carter, but he could guess on his own that the walls were more than just regular rock. They'd probably not let a radio signal through. Their radios had stayed silent since they got stuck in here.  
  
Even if Stargate Command figured out that something was wrong, they wouldn't be able to get through. Since they'd not been sure how the iris on this gate worked, SG-1 had taken the Ancient GDO with them. It was still in Jackson's backpack. So, unless the tech crew at the SGC first managed to find a way to override the iris and then to break through the Ancient isolation walls, they'd not be getting any help from the outside.  
  
The walls were doors. The most reasonable, logical way out would be through them. Shooting them would be stupid, with the huge risk that they would reflect anything shot at them and send things ricocheting around the room. So, getting the doors to open would require them to figure out the right order. Or, rather, would require Jackson to figure it out. If he could.  
  
Jackson wasn't looking too good. He had hardly said a word after he'd translated the Ancient text. He'd asked Sam to dig out a bunch of books and notebooks from his backpack. A real library. Mitchell could hardly believe he always carried all that around. And now Jackson was sitting on the floor, books scattered all about him, his injured right hand resting on his left shoulder. He used his left hand to awkwardly leaf through his older notes. Every now and then he'd turn to look at one of the walls and frown or shake his head to himself.  
  
Teal'c had sat down next to Jackson, hardly saying much either, but offering his silent support. He really had a talent for that.  
  
Mitchell had always considered himself a patient man. He'd never have gotten where he was now without years and years of hard work. When he had been injured in the battle above Antarctica, he'd went through countless hours of strenuous exercise, first learning to walk again, then struggling to regain the strength he had had before the crash.  
  
Now, he really didn't feel all that patient. This silence was maddening. And they hadn't even been here that long yet. A few hours. Time seemed to be moving so slowly when there was nothing to do but wait and think.  
  
Carter was still trying to figure out the ice device. Now that they'd decided not to touch anything, she kept her distance and concentrated on scanning it with every bit of equipment she had. So far, she'd only come up with the fact that it really was powered by a Zero Point Module, but they were too afraid to try and screw it out. She and Teal'c had discussed the possibility that the device was related to the quantum mirror that could transport people to alternate universes. Even if it was, they'd probably need a controller to activate it.  
  
If the thing was the quantum mirror's big brother, it would offer one possible way out. If Jackson couldn't figure out the texts, then they might have to try that. On the other hand, they might just end up in another room just like this, just as closed and sealed.  
  
Trying to think of something even remotely useful to do, Mitchell walked to the nearest table and stared at the things on it. As if he could understand anything about any of them. Especially without even touching anything.  
  
"But maybe, just maybe, I was a bit too strict to say that we shouldn't touch anything at all," he thought aloud.  
  
"Sorry?" Carter said, turning her face away from the silvery casing at the side of the mirror to look at him.  
  
"I was just thinking... If this really is a lab where they studied that huge block of ice, and this stuff on the tables is their research equipment, why would they booby trap it?"  
  
"I think you've got a point. The walls would both keep the rest of the world safe in case something went wrong with the experiments, and deal with any unwanted visitors. So they might not need extra protection... On the other hand, maybe they would have set extra safeguards on their equipment, such as requiring the person handling them to have the Ancient gene."  
  
"Yeah... But what if one of the things on that table really is the key to that mirror-whatever-device-thingy, and it turns out being our best chance for getting out? I think we really need to know if it's safe to touch that stuff. And I guess there's just one way to be sure. Keep an eye on me, will you?" he asked, and reached out his hand to touch the nearest plate.  
  
He didn't feel anything special. Nothing happened. He grabbed the plate and lifted it from the table, turned it around in his hands. Nothing.  
  
He had wasted hours walking around the room when all this stuff had been waiting here all the time.  
  
"All right, people. I think this might actually be safe. Carter, care to take a look at this stuff?"

* * *

  
Daniel had managed to translate most of the text written in the language of P4T-3G6, also known as Vis Uban, the world where he had descended. He'd only spent a short while there. Luckily, the language was actually a creole mixing Latin and a Semitic language he couldn't name, but which was close enough to Arabic that he understood most of it.   
  
Still, it didn't help at all. The text was a fable, telling a simple story of a donkey and an oraf, which was apparently some kind of a bird. It could've been written a thousand years ago, or just yesterday. He couldn't say. He simply didn't know enough of Vis Uban's recent history and the culture of the nomads who now inhabited it.

At least he had translated it. That had to count for something. And he did know that the nomad named Shamda had told stories much like this one, so it wasn't as if he had never heard of anything like this.

He turned to look at another wall, one of the scripts he just couldn't place. The signs were abstract as far as he could see, no clear references to actual objects, and looked simple and geometrical. And didn't say anything to him.   
  
They knew the Ancients could travel in time. There was possibly a timeship right behind one of the doors. Maybe some of these texts were from the future. Then he'd have no way of knowing the exact order.  
  
For a while, he had started feeling better. He'd stayed on the floor, doing nothing but thinking and reading his notes. He'd actually managed to calm down. The painkillers had taken the worst edge off from the burning in his hand, leaving just a dull ache. One thing they couldn't do away with was the horrid smell of burnt flesh. And now that a few hours had passed, he felt it was all coming back with a vengeance. He had to keep his thoughts away from it. He was afraid he'd panic, and then everything would feel all wrong again.  
  
Teal'c had left his side, and was now talking with Sam and Mitchell about something. They seemed to be quite eager about it. Daniel hadn't been paying attention. He had tried not to think of them either. He had come to the unpleasant conclusion that the most likely reason for this lockdown had to do with the large central device, since that had probably been the main object for study in here. That would make it clearly Sam's fault that they were stuck, since she had tried to get that ZPM from the base of the device. And the last thing Daniel wanted to do was to start blaming anyone. So he just ignored that as well.  
  
"Daniel?" Sam had suddenly emerged in front of him.  
  
"What's up?"  
  
"I think you should take a look at this. It's like a hand-held computer, there's lots of text in Ancient in it."  
  
She gave him a rectangular artifact that looked like a tablet, except that the text wasn't carved on the surface, but looked as if it had been printed on it. It had a set of buttons that allowed the reader to scroll and switch pages.  
  
"I thought we weren't supposed to touch anything?"  
  
"Mitchell tried the things on the table, and it seems it's safe, after all. Didn't you notice that?"  
  
Daniel shrugged. No, he really hadn't been watching, not even listening. Now that he listened, he could hear Mitchell's voice coming from behind him.  
  
"Wait, T - there's something on the floor. What's that, a trash can?"  
  
Daniel turned to look, and saw Mitchell crouched next to a silvery bowl. It had a few stones set on the outside, near the rim. He pressed one, causing a loud zap that made Daniel start. With that, he felt his pulse speeding up, which was exactly what he had been trying to avoid all along. Sam had told him that arrhythmias were a known complication of electric shocks. And that was supposing that whatever had hit him had been regular electricity, not some odd Ancient weapon. He'd felt perfectly normal when he had just stayed still and cool. Well, except for his hand, of course.  
  
Apparently nothing bad had happened. Nothing at all. Mitchell wasn't hurt, and Daniel really needed to calm down.  
  
He watched Mitchell drop something, an empty chocolate bar wrapper, into the bowl, and press the button again. Another zap, but this time, Daniel had known to expect it.  
  
"All right. A pretty effective trash can. Zaps away all the trash. Or how about this. Maybe it's an Ancient chamber pot."  
  
Teal'c raised an eyebrow in that expression that Daniel had seen more often than he could count.  
  
"Just a thought," Mitchell shrugged. "At least it does away with that one problem. Seriously. That's a good thing."  
  
Apparently Mitchell had, just like Daniel, come to the conclusion that they might need to spend a long time inside these walls. A very long time. Unless he could figure out the texts. No, don't go there, Daniel told himself, and took a deep breath. He was still holding the Ancient computer, and it too had a lot of text for him to translate. All in Ancient, so he should be able to do it quite easily.  
  
He looked at the page that was open right now. It seemed to describe an experiment that hadn't been successful.  _Activated the -_ that unknown word again, which he thought pointed to the large device _\- but there was still not enough power_. He turned the page, and read a description of something else, a bit of time travel with the timeship. And something about gathering samples from an interesting planet. Then he came across a page with the victorious announcement that _we have finally been able to generate enough power to keep the device active, and it works just as expected. This is undoubtedly the greatest discovery of the Duodecim so far._  
  
He'd probably find an accurate description of the device, what it was and what it did, if he'd read through everything in here. It'd take some time, since there was a lot of text that had nothing to do with it. It was obviously a diary, a log, kept by one of the Duodecim, describing what they had been up to. An extremely interesting piece of information, except that he wasn't sure it'd help them get out.  
  
Daniel pressed the page-turning button until it would go no further. The last page.  
  
 _The rumors of the plague have been confirmed, and it is spreading fast.  
_  
The plague. If this place had been here at the time of the plague, then it was much older than the Avalon caves. _  
  
We have not been contaminated yet, but only hours ago a party came through the stargate carrying the disease. We have gathered to the -_ another word he didn't know, though he had a good guess for its meaning - _with our belongings, and initiated the containment._

"Sam," he called out, "What do you call a geometrical shape with twelve corners? A duodecagon?"

"Dodecagon, actually."

The text had said Duodecangulus, but the meaning was clear. The twelve corners, which obviously pointed to the shape of this room. The modern English version actually sounded better to his ear. "Dodecagon. I think that's what they call this place."

_Once we are ready, we will travel through the device, and escape the grim future that awaits all our race. There has been dispute and disagreement among us. Some think we should not leave, that we should offer our knowledge and try to help, but we are among the last who are not infected, and with the party waiting for us in the stargate room, we cannot open the doors again without becoming infected ourselves._  
  
They had turned on the lockdown millions of years ago, but when SG-1 had come through, the doors had been open. Either the Duodecim had not left after all, or then someone had opened the doors after that. His heart leaped, and didn't quite catch its previous beat. Of course, that made him more anxious, and made it race even faster. He pressed the elbow of his injured hand against his chest, willing it to slow down, and tried to concentrate on the text.

There was a row of small circles in the text, indicating a break, but no new date.

_We are finally ready, and we have agreed on what we will take with us. It is not much, for already we are testing the limits of what the device can transport. I shall leave my book behind, in case some survive the plague and wish to know what became of the Duodecim. Now we must go, and take with us our legacy, the memory and knowledge of all that we have achieved. Perhaps one day we will return and rebuild this galaxy, this time, this universe.  
  
On behalf of the Duodecim,   
  
Feiara_

* * *

  
"I don't know, T - this makes no sense. This doesn't look like surveillance equipment. It looks like household stuff. And this looks like a shaver. Not going to try it out, though," Mitchell said, dropping the Ancient-shaver-wannabe on the table again.  
  
"No, no, it makes perfect sense," Jackson's voice suddenly came from the other end of the room, sounding strained. "It's household stuff. Everyday things. They were packing. The Ancients who worked here escaped the plague through that mirror device, and they couldn't take it all with them. They just ran, and left most of it behind."  
  
"Did not the plague strike the Ancients millions of years ago?" Teal'c asked.  
  
Teal'c was walking towards Jackson, and Mitchell followed him. Carter was already there, but she seemed to be going through their medical supplies instead of fully concentrating on whatever Jackson had to say.  
  
"It did, and according to everything that's in here, this place is that old," Jackson explained, waving the stone tablet Carter had recognized as a hand-held computer. "They closed the doors and left. Ran away. Someone has opened them after that. Or they came back and left again through some other means."  
  
"And ignored all this stuff they had left behind? Probably not. I'd guess it was someone else. Some other Ancients, maybe," Mitchell suggested.  
  
"I don't know. Really don't know. The last writing in this is from the time of the plague. So the doors can be opened. Just maybe not by us. Not by me."  
  
The way Jackson was talking, the way he looked, he seemed panicky beyond what Mitchell would have expected of someone so used to difficult situations. Of course, it was probably more than just the general situation.  
  
"Jackson, maybe you'd better lie down," Mitchell told him. To his surprise, Jackson didn't even resist, just sighed and fell heavily down on his back.  
  
Carter finally finished her inventory and was by Jackson's side again, checking his vitals.  
  
"I'm going to take look at your hand, Daniel. I'll change the gauze, so I'll have to unwrap the old one. It probably won't feel nice, but try and stay still. Teal'c, if you could...." Carter nodded towards Jackson.  
  
Teal'c returned the nod, and knelt by Jackson's head. "Perhaps you could tell us more of the contents of the Ancient diary, Daniel Jackson."  
  
"Not much to tell yet... I've just read a very small part of it, Teal'c - God - Carter, ow-"  
  
Mitchell felt perfectly useless again. Carter had more medical training than the rest of them, so the job of seeing to any injuries fell to her naturally. As for keeping company to Jackson while she was doing her job, Mitchell knew Teal'c could do it better than him. He could try to say something, of course, but it might not help a whole lot. So he stayed back, again.  
  
Teal'c was trying to distract Jackson, keeping his thoughts on the tablet-computer. "Was there any indication of the author's person?"  
  
"Someone called Feiara. That's all I know. Haven't encountered that name before..."  
  
"And this Feiara was one of the group known as the Duodecim?"  
  
Jackson wasn't looking at Teal'c. Instead he was trying to see his hand, or pull it away from Carter, maybe both. "Why won't you even let me see it? How bad is it, really? I still can't feel everything - I'm not missing fingers, am I?"  
  
"You are not," Teal'c replied. "However, it is badly burned. Your seeing it would not change anything."  
  
"Yeah, you're right, it wouldn't, so why shouldn't I?"  
  
Luckily, Carter had already finished, and let go of the now newly bound hand. She cast a worried glance at Mitchell, and gestured towards the other end of the room. They moved away from Jackson, leaving Teal'c to see to him.  
  
"What's up with Jackson?" he asked in a low voice when they were as far as they could get in this limited space.  
  
"My medical training's really basic, and I don't have much to work with in here. I'm concerned that the electric shock might've messed up the normal electrical activity of his heart, but that might not be the case, and we have no way of being sure. It might just be because of shock from the burns, or then it might not be serious. If it's not, it'll probably settle in a few hours."  
  
"And if it is?"  
  
"Worst case scenario, he could go into v-fib and die. And even if all that's just me being overly cautious, he's still dangerously injured. The burns on his hand are bad, and there's a big risk that it'll get gangrenous, so that when we get back, they won't - they'll have to..." she shook her head. Wouldn't say that Jackson might loose that hand completely if they couldn't get help very soon. "Of course, shock is life-threatening on its own, if it gets any worse. If we just had some way out of here that wouldn't require Daniel to do all the work..."  
  
"He doesn't need to do all the work, Carter. Just the thinking part. We'll get out. I'll see to that."  
  
Mitchell knew this was probably not his brightest idea up to date, but he couldn't just stand and wait and do nothing. The doors were the way out that made most sense. Maybe Jackson had already figured out the order. If he hadn't, they'd just have to try one and see if it'd work. Maybe they'd get lucky.  
  
At least Mitchell could try and be more prepared than Jackson had been. "Sam? Got any rubber gloves? Insulation tape? What'd you use for protection against one of those electric jolts?"  
  
She stared at him with wide eyes. "With all due respect, sir - I don't think that's a very good idea."  
  
"Someone's got to do something to get us out of here, and that someone is going to be me."  
  
Carter bit her lip, but nodded. "I've got rubber gloves. And tape. Our shoes should offer pretty good protection too..."  
  
He was already untying his shoelaces. In a few minutes, he'd managed to wrap one gloved hand with tape, and picked up the shoe with it. He wrapped his jacket around it for extra insulation. Felt silly, but might work. Now, he just needed to know where to start.  
  
"Jackson. I need your best guess for the right order of walls. I don't want to hear you don't know it. At least you've got a better guess than the rest of us. Just give me that. Which wall comes first?"  
  
Just like Mitchell had expected, Jackson shook his head. "I really can't say. Don't try it. You'll just get hurt. I don't know." He was panting now, and his face looked grayish. All the more reasons to hurry up with this.  
  
"Jackson, I'm giving you a direct order. Tell me which comes first. We know it's not the Ancient wall. Is it the Egyptian? Maybe I'll just try that, see if it's right..."  
  
"No, no, no!" Jackson yelled. "It's not the Egyptian! Ancient is millions of years old, Egyptian's only thousands. It's got to be one of the texts I can't read. If you're going to do it anyway... Try the second one to the right from the Ancient. The one with circles and lines and squares."

"Thank you!" Mitchell shouted his reply, and sought the wall. He knew what the Ancient text looked like, and the second one to the right from it did match Jackson's description.

Carter was standing nearby, watching him, and Teal'c had helped Jackson up to a seated position so he could see as well.

Mitchell stretched out his supposedly well insulated hand and pushed the wall with his jacket-wrapped shoe.

No jolt, no flash, no electricity. Instead, the wall gave in slightly, and the text started to glow a faint, white light, just like the ceiling.  
  
"You got it right, Jackson, right at the first try! What's next?"

* * *

  
This was mad. Completely mad. Totally insane. Daniel really, really had no idea of the complete chronological order of the walls. He hadn't had enough time, hadn't even translated all those texts he thought he might be able to understand. And now Mitchell was shouting at him to tell which wall came next, as if he couldn't get it that Daniel didn't know. Mitchell had said just a few hours ago that they were not in a hurry, but now, it really looked like he was desperate to get out.   
  
"Try the Ancient. That's probably second oldest," he told Mitchell, though he knew that it could just as well be one of those texts in an unknown script. But no, Ancient was right. The wall lit up, same as the first one.  
  
"You're doing good, Jackson. Next one?"  
  
"Could be Egyptian. Can't know for sure. Mitchell, you don't have to do this - if you'd just give me more time, I could be more certain..."  
  
"No, I'm doing it right now. Just watch me," he said irritably, ran to the wall carved with hieroglyphs, and hit it. It lit up. Right again. And then he was anxiously shouting and asking what should be next, ready to touch whichever wall Daniel told him to, no matter how dangerous it was. 

To make things worse, Daniel could well imagine that he was the main reason Mitchell was so rash. He had tried his best to keep them from worrying, had tried to appear calm and unconcerned, but it was becoming harder with every passing second. He had needed to see how Mitchell was doing, so he had asked Teal'c to help him up, but just sitting up had made him awfully woozy. His heart was thumping madly, as if struggling to burst right out of his chest.

Sam still wouldn't let him see his burned hand, and he was growing more and more certain that no matter what they said, it was damaged beyond repair, and all Doctor Lam could do if they ever got back would be to cut it off. And while one part of his mind thought that, the other just couldn't imagine such a thing happening, couldn't imagine living without his right hand. The very idea made him feel more sick. 

"Come on, Jackson. What's next?"  
  
Telling Mitchell that he didn't know or wasn't sure was no good, so Daniel just had to guess. "Brahmi script. It's left to the one that's in Polish."  
  
Mitchell lifted the shoe to touch the wall. It didn't light up.  
  
He leaped aside instantly, trying to dodge a bright yellow-orange bolt that lashed out from the wall, looking a lot like a staff blast. Of course, he wasn't fast enough. No human could've been. Still, as far as Daniel could see, it hit Mitchell in the shoulder, instead of landing point-blank on his chest, which would've happened without his fast reaction. He went down with a pained grunt.  
  
Daniel slumped to the floor as well. There. Great. Fine. He had made that one mistake, and Mitchell had paid the price. God. He had been stupid. It had clearly not been electricity this time, and what reason had they had to expect that it would be the same each time? Maybe the punishment was different for each wall. Not that it mattered what it was. Mitchell might die, all because of him. His best guess had not been good enough.  
  
Teal'c had left his side now, rushing to help Mitchell, same as Sam. From where he was lying, Daniel couldn't see them. But he had to. He needed to know if he had killed Mitchell. He used his uninjured hand to push himself up, but even seated, he still couldn't see more than Mitchell's feet, with Teal'c's broad back blocking his view.  
  
Gathering what strength he had left, Daniel fought to get up on his feet. He caught a glimpse of Mitchell's upper body, stripped of clothes, covered in blood, and Teal'c's hands pressed on the wound. But his vision was failing fast, taken over by a blaze of bright colors. The dizziness was so overwhelming that he couldn't tell whether he was still standing or falling, or if he had already hit the floor.  
  
Mitchell wasn't dead. Daniel could hear him shouting in a hoarse voice, "Jackson - Daniel - no! Looks worse than it is. Just stay there!"  
  
And then everything turned black.

* * *

  
Way to go, Mitchell. He had really screwed up big time. Instead of getting them anywhere nearer to escape from this place, he'd just made things worse. And it wasn't just that he was hurt.  
  
Of course, he hated being hurt. Hated being shot at with who knows what Ancient stuff. Hell, it felt like someone had blown a hole right through his left shoulder, but he told himself that he was tough and could handle it. After all, it was nothing compared to what he'd went through in the Antarctic. He'd be walking around without any trouble at all as soon as they managed to stop the bleeding and wrap some gauze around the wound.  
  
What he really hated was that in getting hurt, he'd probably made things worse for Jackson, too. It wasn't exactly hard to figure out that Jackson would be blaming himself now, thinking that he'd failed Mitchell, while no one else thought that was the case. Mitchell had forced him to guess, and if anyone was to blame, then it should be Mitchell. Not that anyone was going to be blamed. Starting a fight when they were stuck here indefinitely would be a very bad idea.  
  
From where he was lying, Mitchell suddenly spotted something moving in his peripheral vision, and turned his head. Jackson was struggling to get up, to see what had happened. He was wavering. He shouldn't be getting up. Mitchell tried to shout to him, to tell him that it was all right, that he should just stay where he was. He didn't know if Jackson heard it. And then Jackson was crashing towards the floor. Once again. Mitchell was quickly losing count on how many times he had witnessed him faint. Only this time, it wasn't because of Vala and the bracelets, and they were nowhere near to the infirmary.  
  
Teal'c was crouched by Mitchell's side with his back turned towards Jackson, so he couldn't see that anything had happened. Carter was by his other side, but all her attention was on his wound. She wasn't looking in the right direction.  
  
"Sam - T - one of you - go check if Jackson's OK-"  
  
Carter lifted her gaze from his shoulder, and he could see her expression go from worried to extremely worried, veering towards dismayed. But she had her hands literally full of work. She couldn't just stop halfway through bandaging him.  
  
"I will go, Colonel Carter," Teal'c said.  
  
Before Teal'c had time to give any news, Jackson spoke up himself, revealing that he was quite alive, for now.  
  
"Teal'c? How long?" he asked.  
  
"If you mean to ask how long you remained unconscious, it was merely seconds."  
  
"Mitchell?"  
  
"Colonel Mitchell is being tended to, and he is not in immediate danger of death."  
  
"Unlike Jackson himself," Mitchell noted to Carter in a low voice.  
  
Carter shrugged, but she did call out, "Teal'c, could you bring him over here?"  
  
"If we just got ourselves a pair of beds, some tubes and wires and things that go beep, we could call this an infirmary," Mitchell joked, as Teal'c set Jackson down next to him.  
  
Carter was still working on Mitchell's wound, so Teal'c started checking over Jackson.  
  
Mitchell turned his head to one side to look at Jackson face to face, and found he was staring right back.   
  
"Sorry, Jackson, I got the blonde nurse."  
  
"So... you're clearly not dead yet."  
  
"Yeah, as if you didn't know it takes more than one Ancient staff-blast-wannabe to get rid of me. And I've got this hunch that you're not dead either."

"I guess not," Jackson said, and paused for a while, frowning, with the look that he wasn't sure if he should go on. But he did. "For a while there, I thought I was."

"You and everyone else in this room, Jackson. From no on, no sudden movements, no standing up, definitely no walking, all right? Carter?"

"I'll second that. Fainting like that when trying to stand up is probably due to low blood pressure, which in turn might be due to a lot of things. I think we'd all feel more secure if you'd just stay still, Daniel." 

"Sam - how am I supposed to figure out the texts on the walls if all I can see is the ceiling?"

"So, maybe we'll have to bend the rules a bit," Mitchell answered before Carter got there. "But you could always start with that diary, right?"  
  
"Right. There's years and years of notes in it, so it might take months to finish it."  
  
"Just read the good parts, Jackson. The ones about opening the doors, and maybe that ice-mirror-device."

* * *

  
_What makes this planet particularly interesting is its high gravity. It is curious and surprising that an intelligent form of life has actually developed in such an environment. Their physical appearance is different from most we have encountered, distinctly non-humanoid. These inhabitants call their word the Rowgh and themselves the Roskw. Their way of life is simple and nomadic, closely connected to the animals they call the Ler. Their material culture is not very complex. Ioannes insists that we go and see what becomes of them later. He is eager to learn how their language will evolve, when they will develop writing, and what it shall be like.  
  
_ Daniel dropped the tablet on the floor and closed his eyes. He was wasting time. One of the Duodecim had an interest in languages. His name was Ioannes, and he was not the one who had written all this. If one of the devices on the tables contained Ioannes's notes, that might offer the key to understanding the texts and getting out.  
  
He didn't want to ask others to run errands for him, but they surely wouldn't let him go and skim through the things on the tables himself. It was annoying, really, that though Mitchell's injury was every bit as spectacular as Daniel's, there we was, leaning against his pack and playing cards with Teal'c, while Daniel got the tiptoe treatment. Everyone was so afraid he'd just drop dead all of a sudden that they wouldn't even talk to him in a normal tone, let alone about anything serious or distantly exciting.  
  
Not that he could blame them. When he had passed out, he had, for a moment, thought that that was it. Instead, he was feeling better again, for the moment, at least in some strange meaning of the word. At least he didn't feel his heartbeat unless he purposely concentrated on it. On the other hand, he had happily accepted a few blankets, and he was still feeling cold and shivery. Thirsty, too, especially since the others had been as cautious with giving him water as they were with everything else, and they were already counting their supplies and saving them so they could last as long as possible.  
  
The longer it took him to arrange the walls, the longer they'd need to spend here. He didn't know how long they'd been here already - he had smashed his watch when he'd fallen down after he'd touched the wall. It had certainly been several hours. Maybe half a day. Couldn't be a full day yet.  
  
Ioannes. The Ancient linguist. Daniel could do with his knowledge right now. So he'd just have to ask for someone's help.  
  
"Sam? What're you up to?"  
  
"Working on one of the devices on a table."  
  
"Could you try and look for something for me? Anything that looks like another of these computers, or some other way of writing down notes?"  
  
"Sure thing."  
  
If there was something there, Sam could definitely find it. Daniel picked up the diary again. He scrolled to the next page, which revealed a detailed description of the physiology of the Roskw, which mostly resembled huge worms that had limbs and big brains. A biologist would've probably found it extremely interesting, but at the moment, Daniel just couldn't care less. He scrolled on, through several pages of notes on the Rowgh planet, its climate, its geography, and a few comments on how the visits had gone from the point of view of the observers. Still nothing that might be even remotely useful. He skimmed through the next pages, until one sentence caught his attention.  
 _  
We have known and studied technologies that allow us to visit alternate universes long before we entered this galaxy. The device is stable, the transition simple and without risks to the traveler, unless they should remain too long in a universe with their counterpart.  
  
_ The quantum mirror. Familiar stuff. Daniel had been there himself, visited several alternate universes at different times. But maybe this would reveal something new.  
  
 _The universes we have accessed so far have never been too far removed from our own, and the scope that the standard device offers has been tried and found limited. Some, Ansoi among them, have long argued that this is not enough, that it only scrapes the surface of all the possible, infinite universes that actually exist. That since the very beginning of our universe there has been the possibility of changes that could have altered its shape in countless ways. That there must be universes out there where our very race has never been born, universes where the vast world, the countless stars and belts of galaxies are and will ever remain lifeless and empty, and others which are the home to forms of life far stranger than what we have seen.  
  
_ Yes, Daniel could certainly go with that. That there might be universes out there far stranger than those where Teal'c was still Apophis's first prime and Jack and Sam were married. Universes where there might be no Earth, or no humans. And others where Earth and humans were drastically different from what was now. He was anxious to see if the text was going where he thought it was.  
  
 _Ever since the Duodecim first came together, Ansoi as one of the founding members, one of its main goals has been to find if these universes truly are there, and to discover a way to visit them. Thus their first project, one of the greatest, was to travel far, far back in time to build the Dodecagon, as near to the beginning of everything as they dared, so it should remain, empty, perfectly sheltered, shielded and hidden from outsiders, in all those universes we would visit later. But the device itself still remains inoperative, after years of research.  
_  
The large device really was what they had suspected all along - an advanced version of the quantum mirror. It was the one thing around which this entire research base had originally been built. They had actually traveled in time to build it when the universe was still young, so it would exist in all times and universes. It was amazing, grandiose, working not on a galactic or a universal scale, but multi-universal.  
 _  
_Daniel stopped reading. He knew he was getting agitated, even more so than before. No matter how the others had tried to protect him from it, he could do it all by himself, protected or not. This was a discovery far wilder than even the stargate system, and here they were, stuck inside it, unable to get out, to tell anyone of it. They might all die here right next to it and no one would ever know.  
  
And all of a sudden, he was falling again, loosing all ability to concentrate and think properly. It had happened so fast that he could hardly believe it. His awe and amazement were fading into panic, only it was different than before.   
  
There was a heavy weight on his chest, like one of those cover stones that had crushed his parents. Against it, his heart was fluttering like the wings of a butterfly crunched in a slowly closing fist.  
  
He hadn't even told the others. They still didn't know what the device was. Might never know.  
  
The diary fell to the floor with a clatter.

* * *

  
Playing cards with Teal'c wasn't a whole lot of fun. It wasn't just that he had the perfect poker face, he was also a very good player. Mitchell kept losing to him. It was doubly annoying combined with the continuous sting in his shoulder that made it extremely difficult to keep his cards steady in his shaky and weak hands. But at least time was passing more quickly when he had something to do, annoying as it might be.  
  
Mitchell had placed himself so that though they gave Jackson all the peace and quiet he could get in this room, he could still see him all the time. Teal'c had done the same. They both saw how the hand that had been holding the Ancient computer above Jackson's face went limp. Maybe it was nothing, again, just a passing bout of weakness, but in the current situation, Mitchell couldn't help thinking the worst every time something went wrong.  
  
Carter had been on her way towards Jackson, carrying a load of Ancient devices gathered from the tables. She tossed them all to the floor, ran to Jackson's side, checked for breathing and pulse - and turned to look at Teal'c and Mitchell, shaking her head.  
  
Talking about cold, sinking feelings, this came pretty close to crash landing an F-302 on the Antarctic and sitting there, alone, freezing.  
  
Teal'c had already leaped to help Carter. Now, it was Carter doing mouth-to-mouth and Teal'c doing compressions, working in perfect coordination as if they had done it before.  
  
For the first time since he'd been hit, Mitchell stood up. His feet were every bit as shaky as his hands, but he told them to behave, since they were not injured, and he had to get moving.  
  
He made his way to the nearest table, leaned on it and gazed at the things on it. They hadn't checked through every single bit yet. If these were everyday stuff and items that the Ancients had thought they might need when running from their world to escape the plague, wouldn't they probably include medical supplies? Ancient healing devices? Not that he had any idea what they might look like, and they might require the Ancient gene from anyone trying to use them.  
  
He cast a glance at Jackson. Carter shook her head again. No change.  
  
He gazed at the table. Silver platters. Silver plates. Small silver things with black decorations. Large silver things with large stones in them. And no idea about what to do with any of them. Last time Mitchell had tried to make things better, he'd ended up making things worse. If he'd start punching buttons at random, he might do it again.  
  
He felt his legs giving in, and put both elbows on the table for support. No, he really wasn't going to collapse, too, so they'd have to worry for him and let Jackson go. No way. Agony flaring in his shoulder, hands clutching the table's edge, he slid down to the floor.  
  
"Carter? Jackson?" he called out.  
  
Carter looked like she was about to break out crying, or just break apart in general. They had all been on edge these hours they'd spent here. The fact that everyone had stayed so calm so far proved how professional they all were, and how much they had faced before. But if they lost Jackson... No, not going to happen.  
  
"Keep going, Sam, Teal'c... Just keep going. Daniel's staying right here with us."  
  
If Carter should give in and say Jackson was beyond their help, then Mitchell would step in and go on himself, no matter how hard it'd be to do CPR with half his shoulder blown off.  
  
He started crawling towards Jackson.  
  
A strange, faint sound rang in his ears, and at first he thought it was just in his head. But it was coming from the ice-mirror-device. He turned to look at it. The ice-like surface was shimmering a bright, pure white light. In a flash, it burst out from the mirror and started spreading slowly outwards from it, a wall of light.  
  
When someone activated the stargate, the vortex lashed out and vaporized everything in its path. When someone activated this device - he hoped it wasn't like that. His first thought was to back away from the light, but it was approaching so fast that he had no chance.  
  
He was closest to the ice-mirror, so it hit him first. And passed right through him. It felt strange and unpleasant, but not actually painful. Like liquid electricity. In a few seconds, it went through the others, and disappeared into the walls. Absorbing this kind of stuff was why they were there, after all.  
  
He looked at the device again. Two figures were slowly taking shape from thin air at the side of the block nearer to Mitchell. It looked like they were made of ice, same as the device before it was activated. They looked humanoid, or more than that, like humans. One's fingers contacted the surface of the device, with the other's hand placed on his elbow.  
  
Carter's voice, filled with emotion, made Mitchell turn his face away from the ice sculptures.   
  
"Daniel!" she uttered.  
  
Jackson had opened his eyes. Back among the living again. Whether it was because of Carter and Teal'c, or that odd wall of light that had come from the device, he couldn't tell.  
  
"-'s okay - Better now," Jackson gasped.  
  
The room suddenly looked darker. The light from the activated device had went off. Mitchell looked at it again, and saw that the figures were no longer made of ice. They really were two humans. As he watched, the one who wasn't touching the mirror, a bald man in a long black coat, went down, straight on his back, like a felled tree.  
  
The other man had sand-colored hair and brown clothes with lots of pockets. He pulled his hand away from the mirror and turned to face the room, and SG-1.  
  
Of course, he came to face four weapons aimed right at him, though two of them were more than a bit shaky.

* * *

  
"There's no need for that. I'm unarmed." 

Relieved, Daniel dropped his gun. Of course, he hadn't even bothered to load it. He really wasn't up to shooting anyone right now. He wasn't up to doing much of anything, actually. He leaned back, thinking to put the elbow of his good hand on the floor and stay half-upright so he could see what was happening. Instead, he found himself sliding all the way down, unable and unwilling to get up again.

He heard the newcomer saying, "Really, I'm not going to put up a fight. Can you understand what I'm saying? Do you speak English?"

First contact situation. Daniel's specialty. He wasn't up to that, either. It took surprising effort just to lift his hand enough so he could rub his chest, which was still aching, but now, he figured it was just because of all the bruises. Someone hadn't exactly been gentle with the compressions. Not that they had said anything about what had happened, of course. He'd waken up to find Sam and Teal'c hovering above him and looking utterly devastated, and putting that together with what he had felt before wasn't all that hard.

"Sure, we speak English. I'm Cam Mitchell. This is Sam Carter and Teal'c, and - Jackson?" Mitchell asked, all concern and worry once again.

Daniel hadn't even realized he had closed is eyes. Well, no need to keep them open. He had already seen what those newcomers looked like.

"I'm still here," he answered, his voice coming out so weak that it took him by surprise. "No one calls me Jackson. Just say Daniel."

"Well, you heard him. That's Daniel," Mitchell repeated. "And who are you?"

Mitchell could handle this. Way better then Daniel, at the moment. And where were those blankets when he really needed them? It was so cold in here. He was shivering, and dizzy even though he was perfectly still and flat on his back. His hand was a stupid, painful, dead weight, like a block of wood, without any feel aside from the inextinguishable fire.

"Now, that is a very interesting question." The reply came in a voice Daniel hadn't heard before, slowly and carefully articulated.

He still couldn't think properly. Still couldn't concentrate on anything for long enough. The panic of being stuck and imprisoned and probably dying inside these walls was like a vast black sea that surrounded the tiny island of his half-sentient mind. He tried to figure out these newcomers. So, they spoke English. Or had they just figured out that SG-1 spoke it and chosen it because of that? Were they Ancients? Could they be? Did it make any sense?

"Galen? What happened?" that other unfamiliar voice asked - the man who had spoken first.

Galen, as in the ancient Greek physician? Or maybe, an Ancient who had lived in Earth's antiquity? It was possible, but the timeframe... That would make him much younger, or newer, or whatever, than the Duodecim, those who were here at the time of the plague. Did Ancients really live millions of years? Now they did, sure, since they were Ascended, but before that? And if they were Ancients, wouldn't they be able to get everyone out of here? Away from this awful place and the impending doom?  
  
"Funny, I was about to ask you the same question. I have no memory of the last few minutes. It was a complete sensor overload."  
  
That was the man who was apparently called Galen. Daniel was pretty sure he had said "sensor" instead of "sensory", though he might've just misheard after all. He might've misheard the whole conversation. Maybe he was just imagining the whole thing. Maybe no one had come through the multiverse mirror. God, he felt so sick. He was afraid he was actually going to be sick, and couldn't even find enough strength to turn over.  
  
Galen was speaking again. "Your friend is severely injured. He's in shock. Without help, he won't live long. I can help, if you allow me."  
  
It took Daniel a while to get it that it was all about him. Won't live long. He had already almost died, so it shouldn't have come as a big surprise, but it still felt awful to hear someone say that in such plain words.  
  
"I'm really not going to refuse any help right now," he mumbled, wondering if anyone even heard him.   
  
Apparently they did, or agreed anyway, because the next thing he knew, someone had taken hold of his hand and started unwrapping the gauze. He decided to risk a look, only to turn his head away quickly and close his eyes again. He should've known what to expect. His hand didn't look remotely like anything that could ever be fixed and usable again. The fingers that had brushed the wall were all black and blue, and the rest was swollen and spotted red and purple, all the way up to his wrist. He thought he might not want to know what this Galen - Ancient physician or not - was going to do about it.  
  
He felt Galen's hands holding his. A moment later, he lost all feeling of it. The pain, the burning, everything was completely gone. That wasn't such a bad thing, but the thought of whatever it might mean made him feel more sick and shivering than before. He wouldn't look again.  
  
"Don't worry. I have temporarily blocked the nerve impulses from the damaged area, so there won't be any discomfort."  
  
"Galen, what are you doing?" the other man, still unnamed, asked in a disbelieving voice.  
  
"My best, Maximilian. You might do the same. Since we're going to stay here for a while, the least you could do would be to introduce yourself properly."  
  
An Ancient expressing disbelief when the other was trying to heal someone? That, in Daniel's opinion, didn't make a lot of sense. Unless they were so selfish that they saw it as an outrage to waste their talents on lesser beings, such as normal humans. Or maybe Galen was just doing something so awful that this Maximilian couldn't believe it. Daniel still hadn't dared open his eyes, and since he couldn't feel anything either, he could only guess.  
  
"Ah, then. Dear fellow captives. I'm Max Eilerson, archaeologist, linguist, currently working for IPX. Pleased to meet you all, but not at all pleased to be stuck here with you. Especially since I'm probably the one who has to get us out of here, with all that text on the walls."  
  
"As a matter of fact, you are not. Daniel Jackson is working on it as well. He is very talented and highly appreciated in the fields of archeology and linguistics." That was Teal'c speaking up for him. Unusual to hear such praise in that deep voice, but probably he didn't like this Max's attitude any more than Daniel did.  
  
They went on talking, Sam, Teal'c, Mitchell and Max, while Galen stayed silent, mostly. Daniel soon lost track of what they were saying. He drifted somewhere between dreamless sleep and unconsciousness, without any awareness of the passage of time.

* * *

  
"Please don't say that you're just as stuck and imprisoned here as the rest of us," Mitchell groaned.  
  
He couldn't believe it. That someone could come through the ice-mirror-device just at random and without any more idea about getting out than SG-1. For all he knew, the people coming through that thing should've been Ancients with all the knowledge in the world.  
  
"Yes, I think I just heard myself say something like that. We're stuck here, unless Galen's changed his mind," Eilerson replied. He was already starting to get on Mitchell's nerves. As if the situation hadn't been annoying enough without this smart-ass.  
  
"I have not. I cannot do anything to try and get us out, since it would be suicidal, at best. At least there are some things I can still do."  
  
This Galen was something Mitchell hadn't quite figured out yet. He had taken Daniel's hand between his, so that none of them could really see what he was doing. If he was doing anything at all. Maybe he was just sitting there and trying to pretend that he could be useful and helpful.  
  
"What do you mean, that'd be suicidal? Suicidal as in getting all kinds of nasty stuff from the walls if you touch them?"  
  
"No, that's not what I mean. And if you would mind not disturbing me further."  
  
"Right. So, Eilerson? You feel like telling us what he's talking about?"  
  
"He's afraid of some kind of a freak reaction between the technology that powers up this place and whatever it is that allows him to do his things."  
  
"What things?" Carter put in.  
  
"The magic. Techno-mage tricks. It's really just illusions, most of it, anyway."  
  
"What is a techno-mage?" Teal'c asked.  
  
"Never heard of them before? Well, I can't say I'd really know that much about them, either. A techno-mage is an annoying holier-than-thou, who uses technology to simulate magic and distract and trick those he deems lower than himself, which means pretty much everyone else. And is hardly ever useful when you could really use some help. Like now."  
  
"So you're not Ancients? Alterans?" Carter asked the question everyone had probably been thinking about, though their hopes had gone pretty low already. These two surely didn't look or sound like what Mitchell expected from real Ancients.  
  
"We're humans, if that's what you mean. Despite the fact that Galen might think he's something different and better than the rest of us. I was born on Mars, but if you're Earthers, I won't hold it against you."  
  
"Just wait a moment - on Mars? The red planet? Fourth rock from the sun?"  
  
"Call it what you will. I see you're an Earther to the core, with such a clear southern accent and all. Charming."  
  
"We're all from Earth, except for Teal'c, who's Jaffa, and has lived most of his life on a planet called Chulak. As far as we know, Earth has no colonies on Mars. Not yet, at least - there's been talk about going there for years. So, if we suppose that device really is something like the quantum mirror, then you must be from a timeline where it's already happened. It really sounds pretty exciting. People living on Mars in 2005," Carter said.  
  
"2005? No, you've got to be kidding. That's where you come from? That's where we're supposed to be right now?"  
  
"Indeed, that is the current year, according to the common reckoning of the Tau'ri."  
  
"Well, well. Last I checked, the year was 2267."

* * *

  
Finally, Daniel noticed something that instantly brought him back to the here and now. He could feel his hand again. It was still held tightly between Galen's hands, and tingling all over, but that was nothing compared to the earlier burning. Galen set it down on Daniel's stomach and let go of it.  
  
"Go ahead and take a look, Daniel. It turned out quite handsome, even if I do say so myself. Now, I believe there is someone else here in need of a healing touch - Cam - Cameron, is it?"  
  
"Galen, please. You've been at this for hours already, isn't that enough? You're not trying to make us believe that you can actually heal people, are you?" Max was as cynical about it as before.  
  
Hours, was it? Had it really been that long? Of course, that was perfectly possible, since Daniel really hadn't been counting. He opened his eyes and raised his hand so he could see it. It felt perfectly normal, each finger right where they should be. He closed it in a fist, crossed his fingers, bent each one in turn. It looked normal as well, as if there had never been anything wrong with it.  
  
He had to look at his other hand just to be sure that he had been looking at the right one in the first place. Compared to his uninjured left, the now mended right did seem slightly different. The skin was unnaturally smooth and soft, like that of a newborn, and still slightly tingling and raw. This definitely looked like Ancient healing to him.  
  
"Oh, I think he really can heal people, Max," Daniel said softly.  
  
He was feeling better, just in general. Not much to complain about, except that he was awfully sleepy. Reminded him of that time - only days ago - when Vala had been whisked to the Ori galaxy, and the mixed effects of the Goa'uld bracelets and the Ancient communication device had left him unable to stay awake except for short periods.  
  
Someone was pulling his shoes off. He lifted his head and looked.  
  
"Teal'c, really... I'm way past the age when I needed help with my shoelaces..."  
  
"Daniel Jackson. Galen has expressed that you need rest, and I agree. I believe we should all attempt to sleep for a while, so we can attack our task of escaping this place with renewed energy."  
  
"Whatever, Teal'c," he mumbled.   
  
He didn't mind it anymore when he felt someone closing his sleeping bag around him. Going to sleep really was a magnificent idea.

* * *

  
Mitchell felt like he'd spent every bit of strength he had left, trying to look like he was in control of the situation, pointing a wavering P90 at the newcomers and asking stupid questions. Well, not so stupid, actually. They'd found out amazing stuff, and he was sure there was more to come. Unfortunately it was getting harder and harder for him to follow the conversation. Carter was explaining something about what she had thought about the ice-mirror-device, while Eilerson answered with what little he had figured out. He seemed to be interested about the commercial value of it, which Carter found ridiculous.  
  
Mitchell really found the whole situation ridiculous. He decided he could just as well lie down.   
  
So, two guys pop in from 2267, one of which is some kind of a weird wizard wannabe, while the other does basically the same stuff as Jackson, and advanced as they might be, they're just as stuck here as SG-1, and haven't got much of anything useful to offer? Well, except, unless Galen really could heal people. That would certainly count as useful. And if he could heal Jackson, then surely healing Mitchell would be an easy thing to do. But Eilerson had expressed several times that he'd never seen Galen do anything like this before, and was sure that it was just some kind of a show.  
  
Mitchell noticed that blood was seeping through the bandaging covering his shoulder. For a passing moment, he wondered what'd happen to him if Galen really wasn't able to help. Of course, he'd just fight and get over this injury like everything that had happened to him before this. No problem. Piece of cake. At least, that was what he tried to tell himself, with the feeling that deep down, he really didn't believe it.  
  
When he heard Jackson's weak voice telling Eilerson that Galen really could help, his hopes went up. And so, when the supposed healer showed up by his side, he was anxious to see what'd happen. But it wasn't all that spectacular. Mostly, Galen just sat there, his hands partially blocking Mitchell's view. He seemed to be holding a crystal of some kind in one hand. Then, slowly, very slowly, he saw new skin growing to cover the wound. He didn't feel it, since Galen had done something to stop him from feeling anything at all.  
  
"There you go," Galen said, and lifted his hands, revealing a patch of perfectly healed skin. So much for whatever Eilerson had said, this really worked. At least looked like it had worked, and felt like it too. If this was a trick, then it was a damn good one.  
  
"A few hours of sleep, and you'll be good as new."  
  
Mitchell could believe that. Nothing he'd like to do more than doze off. But he was still in charge, still had an obligation to his team. "Carter? What time's it?"  
  
"Sir... It's late. 0300 already. I guess we could all use a few hours of sleep."  
  
"Make that an order, then. Sleep for all. You mind taking the first watch?"

* * *

**  
Day Two  
**  
Daniel woke up wondering if he'd accidentally fallen from his bed. At least it felt like he was lying on the floor. But he was not entangled in sheets, he was in a sleeping bag, which would mean that he was offworld.   
  
It only took that realization to bring it all back in awful clarity. SG-1 stuck in the Ancients' science lab, with two people called Max and Galen that he barely knew anything about. And Galen had healed him. He was all right now, no longer injured, dizzy, cold - he was feeling fine, except that the floor was hard and uncomfortable, and it was a bit too warm.  
  
The most important thing was, Daniel could think again. The memory of all that had went through his head earlier made him ashamed of himself. It'd been all useless desperation and gloom, surrendering to the fact that they would all die here, instead of something that could help them get out. Of course, there was a perfectly rational, physical explanation for it - of course he hadn't exactly been himself, he'd been in shock, he'd been dying. Still, he hated to think that he had been about to give up.  
  
He got up and looked around. The room was perfectly still and silent. The others had went to sleep too, and they hadn't waken up yet. For a passing while, Daniel had the awful idea that they might all be dead, but he could hear someone snoring - probably Max, and he saw Sam turning around. He looked at his watch, only to be reminded that it was broken. Sam lay near him, her hand out of her sleeping bag, so he checked her watch instead. It showed 0730. They had left the SGC at around 1000 the previous morning. In a few hours, they'd have spent a full day in this place.  
  
Daniel caught a glimpse of movement in the corner of his eye, right where the multiverse mirror was. He turned around, startled. It was only Galen, who apparently wasn't sleeping. He had just sat down on the pedestal, at the foot of the device. Daniel walked over and sat down next to him.  
  
"So... I didn't thank you yet, did I? For saving my hand, my life, and all that."  
  
"You're quite welcome. I take it that you're feeling better now?"  
  
"A lot better. Normal, really. As if nothing ever happened. So, you're an Ancient?"  
  
"Do I really look ancient to you? No, I'm not one of these Alterans who've built this place. Maximilian and I are just as human as you. We actually discussed most of this with your friends when you had already fallen asleep."  
  
"Then you'll have to fill me in. Who are you, and why are you here?"  
  
"Those are questions we spend all our lives trying to answer."  
  
Right. That gave Daniel some serious Oma Desala flashbacks. "Just give me the short version," he said, feeling like he was channeling Jack.  
  
"Maximilian is - much like you, I hear - a specialist in ancient, alien languages. I am a techno-mage."  
  
"What's that?"  
  
"That would be in the long version, I'm afraid. Dreamers, shapers, singers and makers, my teacher used to call us. We use technology to achieve the effect of magic. Not all of us are humans, but we all work for a common goal: understanding the universe and knowing all that can be known."  
  
"But you just don't happen to know how to get us out of here."  
  
"Knowing everything is a noble goal, but hard to attain. We're still working on it."  
  
"And that's why you came here?"  
  
"Yes, in a way, that is why I'm here, since it's the reason I exist. It's the true reason any of us exist. But no, back to the tale. There is a particular reason as to why Maximilian and I came to be in this particular place, and this very unexpected time. We both belong to the crew of a ship known as the Excalibur. At the beginning of the year 2267, the current year where we come from, we set out on a quest to save Earth from a plague that will otherwise wipe out all life from the planet in a matter of years."  
  
"Wait, wait, wait! 2267 AD? What timeline? Did you destroy Ra? Did you even ever meet the Goa'uld? What about the Ori?" The questions kept coming, though as they came, Daniel knew that they might be all wrong. He might not be able to guess how different Galen and Max's universe was from the ones he knew. But at least there were humans there who lived on Earth, so there had to be similarities. "Did you ever find the stargates? Do you even have stargates?"  
  
"Another interesting point that came about in our earlier conversation. I've never encountered anything that resembles these stargates you speak of, and I don't think anyone has, in our universe. Instead, we use jumpgates, which open into hyperspace, in much the same way, allowing fast travel through great distances."  
  
"And you said not all techno-mages are humans, so you've made first contact - when? With whom?"  
  
"Unlike in your universe and timeline, with us, humans only made first contact in 2156. We had been visited by aliens before, but we only learned of it much later. That year, we met the Centauri, who are, according to your friends, not a race known to you, just as the Goa'uld, the Ori, the Ancients, the Asgard, the Nox and the Furlings are wholly unknown to me."  
  
"So it's not the same plague that destroyed the Ancients that's got to your Earth."  
  
"It's not. It's a biological weapon used against us by a race known as the Drakh, servants of the Shadows, who, I hear, also don't exist in your universe. In search of a cure to that plague we have visited a number of alien ruins, and this place is one of them."  
  
"According to the diary of one of the people who worked here, it's supposed to be perfectly hidden. How did you find it?"  
  
"I have certain sources and certain technologies available that come with being what I am. I came across a rumor and a discovery of something, an odd distortion in space, barely noticeable. I was able to locate it exactly and uncover the shielding. Ah, and this was something that your friends found quite intriguing, while I was surprised that they did not know: We are not on a planet. This Dodecagon, as you call it, is basically a space station. There is a hatch in the ceiling - right where your friend Cameron located an area that does not emit light - but even if we could open it, it would only lead to an airlock, and then into the vacuum of space."  
  
A space station. Of all things. Sam had located the gate coordinates quite far out there, not near to any known star, but they had supposed - well, they had had many ideas about it. The base could've been on an asteroid, or on an artificially built planet... Of course, a space station, all alone in deep space, far removed from everything, was the safest place to conduct the sort of experiments the Duodecim had done with the multiverse mirror.  
  
"What about the device, the mirror? How'd you end up here? How did you activate it? And most of all, can we go through it again?"  
  
"By accident, we didn't, and no."  
  
"Sorry?"  
  
"We were locked in, same as you. We're still not sure what exactly closes the doors, but it must be either close proximity to the device, or then touching it, or certain parts of it. We tried to do our best to get out, and in the course of things, Maximilian thought it a wise thing to do to go and touch the surface of the Veraeda, as device was called in one of the texts. I didn't agree with him, but as I tried to stop him, the exact moment my hand contacted his, the device was activated, and we found ourselves here."  
  
"So, even in the year 2267, humans still haven't learned the first rule of survival. Don't touch. But why do you say we can't use the multiverse mirror again?"  
  
"See for yourself," Galen gestured at the device.  
  
Daniel turned to look. The surface was no longer ice-like. It wasn't even transparent anymore, just a dull, matted gray.  
  
"The mirror's broken, and I'm afraid I'm the one to blame for that, just as I'm to blame for the initial activation of the mirror. This is also the reason why I can't do much inside these walls."  
  
"And you're the one to blame because..."  
  
"Samantha told that you understand something of this technology. The power unit of the mirror is, or rather, as it's now fused into its base so it can't be removed, was what you call a Zero Point Module. I, as a techno-mage, need technology to cast spells, and for that, I need a power source. And just as this device, just as the entire complex around us, I use zero point energy. Only I do it in a way that isn't exactly compatible with this technology, or so it would seem. As the two technologies clash, the consequences are impossible to predict."  
  
"So much for escaping through the mirror, then."  
  
"It would only have taken us to another sealed room anyway. Activating it is a sure way to initiate the lockdown at the other end."  
  
"Which, of course, brings us back to the walls and the texts, which still seem to be our only way out. At least there's two of us working on them now, with Max around, or three, if your knowledge of all that can be known includes linguistics and history."  
  
"It does, actually, though right now, it's rather limited. I'll help if I can."  
  
Right. Daniel's knowledge was rather limited now, too, since he could've used a whole library of grammars and dictionaries, instead of a set of random notes from here and there. But it'd have to do.  
  
He stood up and walked a few steps closer to the wall. The text right in front of him was the ominous Brahmi script, the one that he had failed to date, so Mitchell had got badly hurt. Hopefully Galen had been able to heal Mitchell as well. At least he seemed to be sleeping peacefully.  
  
Daniel searched his pockets and picked up a notebook and a pen. Back to work.

* * *

  
Organization. Putting this operation in order. Someone needed to be in charge and coordinate their efforts, so they could get out as fast as possible. And that was Mitchell's job. That was the first thing he decided once he woke up and figured out where he was and what was going on. So, once he'd gotten up, noticed to his embarrassment that he was the last one to do so, and eaten a cereal bar for breakfast, he called everyone to gather around.  
  
"Now, folks. I think we need to arrange things a bit. See what everyone's up to, so everyone can do what they're best at and what's most useful for us. And unless you've got a lot against it, I'm going to be the one in charge. SG-1's my team, after all, and there's four of us, and only two of you future folks," he said, and waited for any possible complaints. He'd been sure Eilerson would come up with something, but surprisingly enough, even he stayed silent, and Galen gave a nod.  
  
"So... Jackson, Eilerson, I guess you already know well enough what your job is?"  
  
"Doing what no one else can - saving us all," Eilerson declared egoistically.  
  
Jackson just cast an icy glance at Eilerson, crossed his arms and nodded.  
  
"Sam, you keep working with the ice-mirror-thing-"  
  
"The Veraeda," Eilerson put in.  
  
"Whatever. You know what I mean. The device. See if there's any way it can be fixed, or anything that we can get from it that could be of any use."  
  
"Yes, sir."  
  
"I'll concentrate on the immediate survival issues - someone's got to do an exact count on how much supplies we have. Now that I'm at it, how about you, Galen, Eilerson - you didn't happen to bring any food or water with you?"  
  
"Well, as we weren't supposed to stay in here for a long time... Not really, we didn't," Eilerson told, for once showing the shadow of an apology on his face.  
  
"If we've got some and they have nothing, then we've got to share! We're all in this together," Jackson insisted. As if Mitchell wouldn't have done it anyway.  
  
"Of course we're going to, though I'm not sure if we've got a whole lot of anything to share. Anyway, that's for me to find out. Which leaves Teal'c and Galen - "  
  
"If I may suggest, Colonel Mitchell, I believe someone should continue investigating the objects on the tables."  
  
"Which I think is a very good idea, Cameron, and I might be of some assistance there."  
  
"Right. So, Teal'c and Galen work on the stuff on the tables. Good. Lunch at 1400 hours. No coffee breaks, since we can't have any coffee."  
  
"Aw, come on, Cam," Jackson groaned. "No need to remind us of that. I'd kill for a cup of coffee..."  
  
Though there was instant coffee in the MREs, they didn't have any water to waste, and no way of heating it, unless Teal'c and Galen should find the Ancient version of a camping stove. And water was what it'd all come down to, just in general.   
  
Out of the basic survival needs, they didn't need to worry about shelter or warmth. Being too sheltered was, after all, the real problem. Their prison was comfortable enough when it came to temperature, and both Carter and Galen assured Mitchell that though they were on a space station, the Ancient technology was such that they'd not be running out of air. Lighting a fire in here would've probably been a very stupid thing to do, and impossible as well, since there was nothing to burn, but luckily they had no need to do it anyway. They had basic medical supplies, plus Galen's healing skills in case of further encounters with the walls. They didn't have a whole lot of food, but people could survive without food for a good while. So, water was the real problem.  
  
They hadn't had a lot of water to begin with - just two quarts each, and Mitchell didn't know how much everyone had already drunk, so he'd have to check that. Maybe most of it. If they'd need to stay here much longer, with six people sharing what little they had, they'd soon be in trouble. As far as he knew, they had no way of getting more, since there didn't seem to be any kind of a water source in the room. Again, maybe there might be something on the tables, but he doubted it. If the Ancients had left in a hurry and had only taken the most important stuff with them, then they'd surely have taken all the water they could get.

* * *

  
Daniel knew other people thought he was good with people. He could usually get along with all kinds of people. And out of all the people in all the infinite universes out there, he had ended up with one he just couldn't stand. After just a few hours of working together, Max was driving him nuts. Still, Daniel had to admit that he was talented, knew a lot, and that they were making a lot more progress together than what he'd done alone. They might really be able to solve this.  
  
The first thing Max had told had been that these walls weren't similar to what he'd seen in the Dodecagon in their universe. That suggested that maybe a new set was generated at random whenever the lockdown was initiated. Max also noted that this set of texts was worse than what he'd first had, since there were five of these that he didn't know at all. Daniel had recognized all but six. He wasn't usually the most competitive person around, but now, he was annoyed by that fact.  
  
"You took this for Brahmi? No, no, no, Daniel, what where you thinking? This is newer than that. It's Kalinga, and unless it's from some timeline that differs from those of us both, it's from sometime between the 6th and the 11th century CE."  
  
"Right. But in my opinion, it'd still come next after the Egyptian, unless one of those completely unrecognizable texts comes between them."  
  
"Do you consider that one over there completely unrecognizable?"  
  
"Actually, I thought as soon as I saw it that I've seen it somewhere before, I just couldn't tell where."  
  
"Think green hills, fiddling, leprechauns, so on - our universes have too much in common not to have similar national clichés."  
  
"Ireland! That's Ogham! So it's probably older than the Kalinga."  
  
"Oh, yes, impressive thinking, Daniel. With this speed, we might even get out in a few years, or so."  
  
Daniel bit his lip, keeping the sour remarks to himself. Fighting would not further their cause. It wouldn't help at all. He'd just have to get along with Max. Go on with the business.  
  
"And you've recognized this one here as well, right?"  
  
"Yes. It took me by surprise at first, since unlike most of the others, this is written in an alien language."  
  
"That's one thing I'd been wondering all along. A surprising majority of these are Earth languages, though of course in our universe many have spread to other worlds when the Goa'uld transported people there. I thought that was the whole idea of it. Ancients were basically humans, the first humans ever, at least in our timeline and our universe. I'm not sure about yours. Anyway, I figured that they'd have chosen to have only human writings on these walls. But now, you think that's not the case?"  
  
"You've really got to pay more attention to what I say. The language is alien, yes. It's a well-known Minbari religious text. But as it's said that it was written by Valen himself, that'd make it the work of a human."  
  
"And that says nothing at all to me."  
  
"Never mind. The bottom line is, this text was written by a human, so it doesn't actually break the pattern. As to dating it, it'd be 13th century CE. Right after the Ogham and the Kalinga."  
  
"Of course, we can't be sure unless we can translate them and recognize the texts. Which isn't going to happen."  
  
"Really, I'm not sure we even need to translate them all, they're clearly from different periods of time."  
  
"Right. Anyway, can you read Kalinga or Ogham?"  
  
"Of course I can - if I can first study a signlist, read a grammar, and check the words from a dictionary."  
  
"So, it's not an issue. We'll just have to hope the order's right, even though we can't understand any of the texts. Great. At least I can translate this one in no time and maybe have an accurate dating, since it's medieval Latin, though I can't understand why it's that messy. Actually, it might even be older than your 13th century Minbari."  
  
"You're right, I'll give you that. Of course, I could've translated the Latin as well, but I'll leave it to you and concentrate on something more challenging. Perhaps I'll try to check that one over there. You have no idea of what it might be?"  
  
"None whatsoever."  
  
"That doesn't surprise me in the least."  
  
"You don't have any idea of what it is, either, do you? Just go away and let me work, Max. Please," Daniel said, finally unable to put up with Max's endless sneering.  
  
Without Max harassing him, Daniel could almost enjoy working on this. Especially since he was able to figure out the medieval text in no time. It wasn't actually a text at all. It had words, the standard wording of the Gloria of a Roman Catholic mass, but the little squiggles he had taken as some sort of distortion or mess in the text were probably neume notation. It was a piece of music written in the medieval way. He wasn't very experienced with such things, but all things considered, he was pretty certain it was from the 10th or the 11th century. It was a period of time that overlapped that of the Kalinga, so that complicated things further - they couldn't know which came first without being able to read and date the Kalinga. They'd still just have to guess, unless they got some unexpected help.  
  
Max, who was apparently fluent in Polish, had dated the text written in that language to the 19th century. What they had left was the Vis Uban text that Daniel could translate but couldn't date, and then three scripts that neither had recognized, one of which Max was working on at the moment. Daniel didn't want to talk to Max again, so he picked another one. There was something very distantly familiar about it, a lot more vague than what he'd felt about the Ogham. It was annoying. He went over to his stuff and grabbed a bunch of his old notes, hoping that they might shed some light on the matter.  
  
He ended up staring at the wall stupidly, trying to dissect each symbol in his head. There was something so very familiar about them. His best guess was that they were an evolved, newer version of some old writing that he knew. If he could only name it.  
  
"Daniel Jackson?" Teal'c's deep voice startled him out of his contemplation.  
  
"What's it, Teal'c? Something important?"  
  
"We found another Ancient diary, or a device that very much resembles one. I believe you wish to see it?"  
  
"Right. I do, maybe not just right now..."  
  
"Indeed, for it is also 1400 hours, the time for lunch set by Colonel Mitchell. Thus you can eat now, and then study the diary afterwards."  
  
"Lunch time already? Okay. Now that you mention it, maybe I'm a bit hungry."  
  
He followed Teal'c to one part of the room where Mitchell had gathered together all their supplies. Mitchell was looking grim, and when he had told them what he had to say, no one else looked cheerful, either.  
  
"I hope some of you have good news to give, since I don't. We've only got about four quarts of water left, altogether, and so far no way of getting more. I guess you all understand what that means. Either we get out quick, or we'll get awfully thirsty in the days to come."

* * *

  
"Now that we're all having a break, I'd like to hear some updates. How're we doing? Anything, anyone?" Mitchell asked.  
  
"We've put over half of the texts in order. I think we might be done by the end of the day," Eilerson sounded confident about it.  
  
Jackson smirked, suggesting that he didn't quite agree, but didn't say anything, just kept poking his cold MRE with his spoon. All right, so it really wasn't a gourmet meal, but at least it was food.  
  
"Good work. Then we'll just have to decide who gets to be the lucky one who punches the walls."  
  
"Couldn't we take turns? There's no reason it has to be the same person touching each," Carter suggested.  
  
"Now, that's an idea. So, Sam, have you got anything new to tell?"  
  
"I'm afraid not. The ZPM has melted right into its slot, we can't get it out, and even if we could, we'd have nothing to replace it with, and it'd do us no good, since it's not working anymore. It also means we don't have to worry about getting any more visitors. Other than the ZPM, there are no clearly discernible parts in the device, no control panel or anything like that. I'm not sure if working on it is the best thing to do right now, I could just move over to the tables as well."  
  
"Teal'c, Galen, what's up with the tables anyway?"  
  
"We have found several objects that Galen deems interesting, but will not say much more. Also, there is another Ancient diary, which I gave to Daniel Jackson, a few picture viewers that show planets as seen from space and landscapes from their surfaces. And one device which seems as if it could be used to clean one's teeth."  
  
"No! Really? An Ancient toothbrush? That's just..." Mitchell shook his head. "Well, keep looking, there's got to be something we can use there. At least the diary is a good find, if it's got anything in it that helps with the walls. Jackson?"  
  
Daniel had suddenly leaped up from where he'd been sitting. "Yeah! I've got it now!" he exclaimed, whatever that meant.  
  
"Daniel? What's up?"  
  
Ignoring Mitchell, he made his way back to the wall he'd been staring earlier. Eilerson followed him, already asking doubtfully,  
  
"You think you actually managed to figure it out?"  
  
"No, I don't think, I know. Just look at it. I knew it's something familiar. It's way too familiar to have taken me this long. It's Demotic! Or, rather, it's not Demotic, but some extremely evolved odd version of it, something that's never existed in our universe."  
  
"Demotic? That's clearly not Greek, so you mean, Demotic Egyptian?"  
  
"That's what it's got to be. It's so similar that I can't see what else it could be. This is amazing! It's, it's the next stage of Egyptian writing - what would've happened if Egypt had never succumbed to foreign rule-"  
  
"Yes, that's all very interesting, but the main problem remains. Can you date it?" Eilerson was perfectly dispassionate.  
  
"I'll have to translate it first. I can't read it right away, it's so different, but I think I can soon enough, and maybe that'll give us some hint to the dating..."  
  
"Good thing you can read it, Daniel, but now, we're having a lunch break. All of us. You can work on it later," Mitchell told them.   
  
Eilerson left the wall and came back to the rest of them, but Jackson sat down right in front of the wall and opened a book on the floor, and went on, just like earlier, poking a cold MRE, while his thoughts were probably a thousand years away.  
  
For a moment, they all sat and ate in silence. Mitchell had started to have this thing against silence in here. This place was so eerily silent. There just weren't any sounds at all if no one spoke, no hum from the air conditioning, no mechanical sounds from the technology that was bound to be everywhere around them, nothing. Because of that, Eilerson's sudden, sharp question startled him, though it was aimed at Galen.  
  
"So, Galen - now that we're all sitting here together nicely and comfortably - you wouldn't care to explain why I've never seen you heal anyone before? And more than that, why haven't you done anything about the plague, you and all your techno-magical friends who just spend their time hiding somewhere? Can't waste time saving lesser planets?"  
  
"Maximilian - you don't think I'm doing everything I can, everything in my power, to help Earth?"  
  
"Of course I don't. You keep to yourself, you keep more secrets than the rest of the crew combined, we never know exactly what you're about, and you're not exactly straightforward about it either."  
  
"We don't need to have this conversation, not here, not right now, Maximilian."  
  
"Oh yes, Galen, I think we're having it right here, right now, in front of these people, with you unable to toss me with a fireball if you're unhappy about it. So they'll know everything as well."  
  
"There is no 'everything' to tell. There's a very simple reason I can't just go and heal the plague: I can't. None of us can. Disease are generally much more difficult to heal than injuries, and something as complex as this is beyond our skills and means."  
  
"And you really expect me to believe that?"  
  
"What you believe or do not believe is not my concern."  
  
Interesting as the conversation was, with all the odd things it told about these techno-mages and about Galen, Mitchell couldn't let it go on. "Gentlemen, guys, folks - Max, I agree with Galen, this isn't the time or the place for this. That's rule number two from now on - wait, no, actually, it's rule number three. One: No Touching the Walls. Two: No Wasting Water. Three: No Fighting. Am I making myself clear?"  
  
"I've really no reason to take orders from you," Eilerson said. Something Mitchell had been expecting ever since he first declared he was in charge. He wasn't going to put up with it.  
  
"We've got to work together here. We're running out of water. We won't live long without it. Fighting isn't going to help us get out. So you just shut up, Eilerson, shut the fuck up, and do your best. You can fight all you wish once we get out. Until that, No Fighting!"  
  
Mitchell didn't get the satisfaction of seeing Eilerson's expression change, since it didn't. He stared back just as arrogantly as ever, but at least he really did shut up.

* * *

  
The post-Demotic Egyptian text really was something. Translating it was a test of creativity and intuition, since the grammar was different from what Daniel was used to, and it was full of odd words he'd never met before. Of course, they were words that had never existed in the world he knew. But what it came down to was that it was some sort of a declaration of human rights. It said that all are equal, women and men alike, all races, all peoples, all religions, and so on. No mention of any divine powers at all.   
  
This was something that the ancient Egyptians he knew would certainly not have written. His best guess for a date was that this was pretty new, possibly newer than the medieval, the Kalinga and the Minbari. He couldn't be sure, he couldn't really base that on anything, but that was what his intuition said. That if this Egyptian language and the civilization that had written it had evolved directly from what he knew to this, then it'd have taken a thousand years, maybe more. He was willing to bet on it.  
  
"Max? I've got something on this one. Any luck with yours?"  
  
Max walked over to Daniel from the wall he'd spent the last several hours working on. "What've you got?" he asked, not answering Daniel's question. Probably didn't want to tell that he hadn't got anything new to say.  
  
"I'm betting that this one's newer than anything we've arranged before, but probably older than Polish."  
  
"And that's a guess?"  
  
"I've translated it, and the way it reads, a declaration of human rights thing, that's my best guess based on my knowledge of the entire Egyptian culture."  
  
"Right. Which probably isn't a lot."  
  
"Which actually is what I've been studying since I was a kid."  
  
"And unfortunately we can't all be child prodigies."  
  
Daniel had, as far as he knew, actually been a child prodigy. He had already heard several times that Max had certainly been one. Still, he ignored that comment as best he could, and changed the subject.  
  
"Don't you think you were a bit optimistic when you said we'd have this figured out by the end of the day?"  
  
"I think we've already got it, as close as we'll ever get. There are still two scripts that neither of us knows, and with what you've suggested, I think we can assume they're from some future timeline, so we just can't know them. Luckily there's only two, so we can try them both ways - Galen can always heal any injuries that someone might get if we don't get it right the first time."  
  
"That's assuming that those two really are from the future, and not something we just don't know that'd fit in somewhere among the others."  
  
"Look, logically thinking, they've got to be from the future. There's already a surprising concentration of texts from the first millennium CE. There's only two that're millions of years old, that one lucky guess of yours from your first try, and then the Ancient. Then there's the hieroglyphic Egyptian. Then the Ogham, the Kalinga, the medieval neume notation, the Minbari - all from a surprisingly short period of time. Next, you'd put your Demotic, right? And after that..."  
  
"It could be either Polish or the Vis Uban, which might not be very old, though on the other hand, it could be way older than I think."  
  
"No - logic, again! We've already got so many texts from some periods, I think we've got to have at least a few from recent times. I'd say it's recent. Maybe contemporary to you."  
  
"So, you'd put Polish first, and then Vis Uban, and then the two we don't know in some order. So, the last four come down to just guessing and hoping no one gets hurt too bad."  
  
"I'm not going to be the one who presses the walls. Neither should you. We're needed to figure this out. If we can't get it right now, then we'll have to think about it some more. The others can't do that, so they're expendable."  
  
"You're just not willing to risk your precious neck," Daniel muttered. He was going to do it, actually. He wouldn't let anyone else get hurt again for his mistakes. But he wouldn't argue. No Fighting, as Mitchell had said. "Anyway, if that's our best guess, maybe we shouldn't waste more time. Let's go and talk this over with the others, so we can actually try it out."

* * *

  
"Jackson, no. One word, two letters, you're a linguist, you can figure this out. No. No way, Daniel." Mitchell could hardly believe he was hearing this from someone who was supposedly so brilliant.  
  
"Then we'll really never get out, because there's no way I'm going to let anyone else risk it again. I already failed once, and nearly got you killed. I won't let it happen again. Either it's me doing the walls, or then no one. Besides, it shouldn't be that bad this time, with Galen around."  
  
"And if it's something he can't heal? Who's going to figure out the correct order if you get your head chopped off or something?" Right, that was awful, Mitchell hated it as soon as he had said it, but it was true as well. They couldn't even begin to guess all the things that could happen if they'd make a mistake again. Which was why Mitchell thought they should do it one at a time, one person per one wall, in a random, fairly drawn order.  
  
"If I get it wrong, I'll just be glad it wasn't someone else, and you've still got Max around. He'd not touch the walls for a million dollars."  
  
Eilerson shrugged. "How much are your dollars worth? There's always a proper price for everything."  
  
"Never mind! Cam, you've got to let me do it. We think we've got it right now, anyway, there's only two texts at the end that we don't know and aren't sure about, so we'll have to guess, but even then, it's a fifty-fifty chance, and if it's not right at the first time, then we can just try the other one."  
  
"Daniel... You don't have to do it, no one's blaming you for the previous time," Carter tried. But he just wouldn't listen.  
  
"We're not getting anywhere with this. I'm going to do it. Just try and stop me," Jackson declared, heading for the first wall - the one he had guessed correctly the first time, when Mitchell had done the wall-touching.  
  
Teal'c stopped him before he got there, grabbing hold around his waist. No way Jackson could escape that hold, though he was struggling and squirming all he could.  
  
"Teal'c! Teal'c, please. Come on. Let me go. This is my job. If I get it wrong, it's my fault, and I take the blame and the punishment. Isn't that the way the Jaffa think? That one must pay for one's mistakes?"  
  
"Indeed it is, but these mistakes will not be yours alone. They will be those of Max Eilerson as well," Teal'c spoke with the steady voice of reason.  
  
"Then we're not getting out. I won't tell the correct order to anyone."  
  
"What's to stop me from telling it?" Eilerson put in. "I just want to get out. I don't mind who does it, as long as it's not me. Daniel, really, it's so touching that you're willing to be the martyr, and the concern you others show is every bit as moving, but get over it already."  
  
"Stay out of this, Eilerson," Mitchell said coldly. "Daniel? All right. No Fighting's still the rule. I'm going to let you do this. Do it quick, before I change my mind. Get us out. Galen, stay close to him just in case."  
  
Jackson nodded grimly. Teal'c released his hold, and without a moment's hesitation Jackson walked to the first wall and touched it. It lit up as before.  
  
The next two walls they already knew - the Ancient and the Egyptian. No surprises there either, they started to glow soothingly just like the first one.  
  
"Max? We agreed that it's the Ogham that's next, right?" Jackson checked with Eilerson before proceeding. Whatever Ogham might mean.  
  
"Leprechauns, fiddling and green hills. 3rd to 6th century."  
  
With Galen following right on his heels, Jackson walked over to a wall covered in horizontal lines that had sets of shorter vertical lines crossing them, and touched it. The second his fingers hit the surface, they all saw it wasn't correct. The lights from the other walls blinked out.   
  
The Ogham wall stayed dark, no hint of anything bright striking at Jackson. Instead, there was a really odd sound, a sort of a buzzing whistling, and a hint of movement in the air between him and the wall.  
  
And then Jackson was lying on the ground, writhing in pain, with a forest of spikes sticking out of his upper body.

* * *

  
Again.  
  
He'd done it again, failed again.   
  
At least he'd got what he wanted - no one else was hurt, just him.  
  
And now he had the unexpected, really uncomfortable experience of finding out what it felt like to be a pincushion. Being stuck with a bunch of needles in the infirmary was nothing compared to this. Nothing at all.  
  
Though most of his mind was lost in the agony, one corner kept wondering what had went wrong. And it refused to take all the blame. Max had been so certain that it was Ogham and that it came before the Kalinga that Daniel hadn't even doubted it. Which had been a stupid thing to do. Blindly trusting someone he hardly even knew.  
  
Someone had taken hold of his shoulders. Galen. The saving angel once again, though - once again - trusting him blindly was probably just as stupid as trusting Max. He'd not been sitting with the others at lunch when Max and Galen had had their little exchange, but Daniel had still heard it, had heard Max say that Galen held more secrets than the rest of their crew combined.  
  
"Daniel, I need you to stay still. I'm going to remove the needles and heal the punctures. It's going to take a while, and they're spread so wide that I can't numb it all - Samantha? Do you have any sedatives? Strong painkillers? I could also use a pair of gloves."  
  
Gloves? What for? Daniel couldn't figure that one out. Instead, he concentrated on staying still and catching his breath. This wasn't so bad. It really wasn't. The last time had been a lot worse, had hurt more. He was still conscious, he was still breathing, he wasn't going to die. Not even nearly so. Just a load of needles, nasty, but not that dangerous. Right. Fine.  
  
Ouch. One more needle stuck him, as Sam injected him with whatever it was she'd got.   
  
Ow. One less needle. And another. Galen was plucking them out quickly, as if he was in a hurry. Daniel wondered why he'd be, but didn't come up with anything.  
  
This really wasn't so bad. He was actually starting to believe that. Each new needle that was pulled out only stung for a very short while.  
  
He was all sleepy again, and feeling strangely happy and good. It made no sense. Galen's face was getting blurred, going in and out of focus.   
  
He couldn't really tell if that was because of the wall and the needles, or if it was what Sam had given him. Might be that. They probably had morphine among the medical supplies, unless they had used it up already with the previous injuries... It would perfectly explain the way he felt.  
  
Daniel fought against it. He wasn't going to fall asleep. Then they'd all get overly worried again. He'd show them that it wasn't so bad. He'd hit an easy wall this time. Got lucky.  
  
Now it was Sam's face floating above his.  
  
"Sam?"  
  
"It's going to be okay, Daniel, just a moment longer."  
  
"Sam, 's not bad... 'm okay... Say that to the others... Don' worry..." the words came out more slurred than he'd expected.

* * *

  
That was it. Mitchell wasn't going to let Jackson anywhere near those walls again. Ever. If that meant they were staying here, then fine. That'd be the unofficial rule number four. That even though Rule One had to be broken, even though someone had to touch the walls, it wouldn't be Jackson anymore, no matter what.  
  
All in all, nasty as the thought was, Mitchell was surprised that this hadn't been any worse. Right, it did look horrible, and probably felt that way too, but it wasn't lethal. He'd figured from the earlier attacks that the punishments were supposed to be just that, they were supposed to kill. So he'd been wrong. For once, that was a good thing.  
  
When Galen had plucked out all the needles except for five or so, he looked up, straight at Mitchell.  
  
"Cameron? Would you mind bringing over that trash can-chamber pot-device?"  
  
That took Mitchell by surprise, but he just shrugged, said "Sure," and did what he'd been asked.  
  
Galen had been piling the needles on the floor, careful to keep them in one place, away from everyone, so they wouldn't touch anything. Combined with the thick gloves he was now wearing, that really gave the impression that he thought the needles were dangerous. Which was a chilling thought. Maybe Mitchell hadn't been wrong after all. Maybe there was something in them. That was what Galen seemed to think, since he collected the needles, careful not to touch the sharp ends, and dropped them into the bowl. He removed his gloves and put them in as well, and then pressed the button, zapping them out of existence.  
  
Now that Mitchell looked at Jackson, he did seem more than a bit out of it, glazed eyes staring absently at something, smiling vaguely. The few comments he'd made had sounded like he was drunk. But Carter had sedated him so he'd not feel the worst of the needle-removing operation, so that could explain all as well.  
  
Galen had turned to Jackson again, holding that same crystal Mitchell had glimpsed before over him. A moment later, he stood up and walked away, gesturing for the others to follow. Teal'c stayed behind, lingering by Jackson's side, but Galen shook his head to him and showed that he should come, too.  
  
"Now, this is important for us all. So far, I've seen no signs of anything, no poison or infection of any kind. Perhaps there was none. Still, we should all be cautious. I wouldn't notice a virus, except from the symptoms if some show up, so there could still be one. If it's airborne, then we will all have it sooner or later. On the other hand, as far as I've understood, the previous punishments from the walls have only struck a single person, so that might be the case here as well. Nevertheless, from now on, I recommend that you take care and keep in mind the fact that Daniel could be contagious."  
  
"Do you not think that this should be told to Daniel Jackson himself?" Teal'c asked.  
  
"Actually, I see no reason to tell him. I have means of monitoring him closely so that he won't notice it. If there's nothing, then he'd just be overly worried without any reason. If there truly is a serious viral infection, then there might not be much I can do, and worrying over it will not change that fact. But, of course, it's your call, he is your friend, and you'll do as you see fit."  
  
"See - that's the way he always works. The less you tell people, the better," Eilerson muttered. Mitchell could just guess he wouldn't be going anywhere near Jackson anymore, not until they could be a hundred-percent sure that there was no risk of anyone catching something from him.  
  
"Sir, I've got to say I agree with Galen on this. Daniel's been through enough already, let him just think that everything's all right now," Carter said.  
  
"I disagree, Colonel Carter. He has the right to know of our doubts."  
  
The decision was Mitchell's to make. He'd already made enough bad ones for one day. He did want to protect Jackson, didn't want him to fear some awful disease that might not even exist. But as he tried putting himself in Jackson's position, he figured that he'd want to know.  
  
"I'm with you, Teal'c. We'll tell him. Though maybe we'd better wait a while, wait until he's all himself again. I the mean time, I want someone with Jackson all the time. The rest, just go about your business as usual."

* * *

  
As the funny, fuzzy cloudiness that had taken over Daniel's mind was slowly starting to release it's hold, he asked Sam, his present guardian, to bring that other Ancient diary to him.  
  
Someone had been watching over him all the time, talking something every now and then. He'd answered as best he could, but had mostly ended up rambling incoherently. He hadn't fallen asleep, or at least he hadn't noticed it if he had.   
  
He was glad he was finally getting over it. It'd just been a bunch of needles. He could've survived it without being sent up to the fluffy could plane. Sam had really overdone it. He told her that. She just chuckled, and gave him the diary.  
  
He opened it and read the first page that came up.  
  
 _Today, I discussed the Veraeda with Arden. He's troubled. Though he and the others who have went through have assured everyone that it works as predicted, that is not entirely true. The control mechanism is flawed, does not work as it should, although it is of the same kind so successfully used in other devices, such as the space vessels. Of course, it would be impossible to accurately think of something no one has ever seen, but still, the travelers have found themselves tossed hundreds, thousands, even millions of years forward or backward in time, without wishing to do so. It almost seems as if the Veraeda has a will of its own, for often the travelers have emerged in the room when someone has been sealed inside, unable to get out. Only last time, they found a group of four of our kind, from Avalon, but far younger than us, millions of years in the future, trapped inside, and helped them out just in time.  
  
_ Daniel couldn't believe his eyes. He read the sentence again, and again. It could mean anyone. Four from Avalon. Avalon was the Ancient name for Earth. It could mean anyone, but it also might mean SG-1. Only not in this timeline. In some alternate universe, they might have been saved by the Ancients. In this universe, that was not going to happen. There were no longer four of them, there were six, and the Veraeda was broken. But there was nothing more about that in the text. It went on analyzing Arden instead, his worries, his state of mind. It was very personal. Daniel scrolled on a few pages, and stopped when he noticed a familiar name.  
  
 _Feiara has still not been able to overcome her feeling of guilt over being here. She knows that she is only a member of the Duodecim because someone needed to take Eufrasia's place._ _Of course, she was nowhere near to the Dodecagon when Eufrasia perished. Still, her emotions on the matter are confused. It is also clear that she fears the Veraeda, more than anyone else. Though Arden and Arian have assured her that it is completely safe now, that the accident that took Eufrasia from us was only a part of the development process, she is still doubtful and afraid.  
_  
Right. So the device could be dangerous, or had been, at some time. That wasn't all that surprising. Daniel spent a while considering the diary, scrolled a few more pages on. Unlike Feiara's diary, this one contained no exact, scientific data. It was all about people, all about the members of the Duodecim, how they felt, what issues they had with things, or with each other. Apparently whoever had been writing this was some sort of a psychologist, in charge of seeing to the mental well-being of the Duodecim. Or then, maybe just someone obsessed with observing people.   
  
There was another familiar name, the one he'd often thought about, at the beginning of a long paragraph of text.  
  
 _Ioannes has been avoiding me. Where several others have expressed concern over the containment, or rather, the way it must be opened and the traps in the walls, Ioannes insists that they should remain. First of all, a large part of the design was his, secondly, he personally enjoys the ever changing puzzle of putting the texts in order, and lastly, he says that if indeed someone should be wise enough to find their way into the Dodecagon in a timeline where it is empty and abandoned, they should have the means to get out. We have not informed many people of the actual location of the Dodecagon. Each device for opening the stargate is accounted for, and is in the possession of someone we deem reliable. It is highly unlikely that anyone should get in, but there is already proof from travel through the Veraeda that it has happened. The way Ioannes sees it is that, if someone becomes trapped and cannot get out, they are not worth rescuing, not worthy of getting out. That it is all right and good that they should suffer and die. This is a side of him that makes me worried. I do not know what is the reason for such hatred of those who are not as advanced as we. He is not willing to speak of this. I have suggested that I might request his suspension from the Duodecim if he continues showing overly violent and destructive thoughts, but he does not care. He knows he has the favor of Ansoi, Ystradwel and Brann, and with such protection, he will never be suspended.  
  
_ Daniel had pictured Ioannes as someone a bit like himself. This changed that completely. Ioannes was nothing like Daniel. He was the reason these walls were here, the reason they were trapped. Daniel could forget any hopes about finding Ioannes's diary. He wouldn't have left it behind, lying around so that some lower lifeform might pick it up and use his notes to escape the traps he had set. As for this diary, it had offered some interesting knowledge, such as the fact that the Veraeda was thought-controlled, but nothing that would be even distantly helpful with the walls.  
  
"Sam, you think it's all right if I get up and start working again?" he asked, forming the words clearly without the slightest trouble.  
  
"You're feeling normal again?"  
  
"Perfectly normal."  
  
"Then I guess it's all right. Just wait a bit, I'll check with Mitchell first. I think he had something he wanted to say to you."

* * *

  
"Yes, there's no reason why he shouldn't return to his work right away," Galen assured.  
  
Mitchell was still suspicious. He hated just having to accept whatever Galen said because he seemed to know things and was very convincing in expressing them.  
  
"How's it exactly that you can be so sure? How do you know? I mean, I don't see any scanners or stuff, and he's all the way over there," he tried, though he was certain they'd not get a straight answer.  
  
"The reason you cannot see any 'scanners or stuff' is because they are in here," Galen said, lifting his hand in front of Mitchell's face, "And in here," he pointed to his head. "You must not suppose something doesn't exist simply because you cannot see it."  
  
"Yeah, sounds cool and mystical, but without any kind of evidence except for your word, how can we know for sure?"  
  
"You want concrete proof? Scientific evidence? We could arrange that. You could go ahead and count someone's pulse as well as you can with only your  watch, your fingers and your mind, and I could tell it to you exactly without touching the subject at all. But then, how reliable could such evidence be when you could always be at fault, just as well as I?"  
  
Now that Mitchell thought about it, the idea was somewhat worrisome. He couldn't imagine Galen ever telling all the things he could or couldn't see. Mitchell didn't consider himself much of a scientist or a medic, but he saw the implications. If Galen could monitor someone's heart rate or body temperature so they couldn't notice it, he might be able to tell a lot about how they felt, if they were nervous, or angry - and he could probably notice lies. Then again, it could all be just a show, and he might not be able to see anything more than the average person. Maybe he just told these things to gain respect, or to keep everyone wary. That would've been really pathetic. And Mitchell was starting to feel a bit paranoid.  
  
"At least I'd know how I'd got it if I'd done it by myself. But never mind. I'll take your word, once again. You've been right about things so far, and I'm really not sure what you'd get out of lying to us. So, let's go and tell Jackson. Not you, Galen. You just - do whatever you do. Go bug Eilerson or something."  
  
Mitchell, Carter and Teal'c crossed the few steps across the room to where Jackson was sitting, again flipping through some notes.  
  
The more he'd thought about this, the more certain Mitchell had grown that they absolutely had to tell Jackson. They had all been taken aback by Galen's grim words, the thought that they might have an airborne killer virus in here, without anything anyone, not even Galen, could do about it. It would certainly make people even more tense than they'd been before, and they'd probably all start keeping a distance to Jackson, at least unconsciously. If no one told Jackson why, he'd be doubly isolated.  
  
Mitchell also had something else he must say, something he had to do, and it wasn't a whole lot easier or happier.   
  
He took Jackson's canteen and handed it over to him. It was almost empty.  
  
"That's the last of your water. Yours to drink when you feel like it."  
  
Jackson took it and nodded. He didn't say anything. There wasn't much to say about it, really. It was an awfully concrete reminder of the fact that they needed to get the walls open soon.  
  
"...and, there was something else. Just get to work right away, that's what you need to do, what we all need you to do. And I know I don't need to tell you that. What I have to tell is, Daniel, just... So that you'd know - about those needles. Galen figured that there might've been something in them. Poison would've probably had a faster effect, so, a virus, or something. So, he's told us all to consider you possibly contagious, until proved otherwise."  
  
"Oh," Jackson said, looking dead serious. He spent a while considering the thought, frowning, and then continued, "It does make sense, really."  
  
"Galen didn't want us to tell you. Didn't want you to worry over something that's probably not there."  
  
"So far, there's no sign of anything at all. He says you're all right," Carter added.  
  
"And this makes me trust him oh so much more than before," Jackson noted sarcastically. "Thanks for letting me know."  
  
Jackson got up, looking a bit unsteady, but got his balance back quickly enough, and walked over to talk with Eilerson.

* * *

  
"So, you've figured out why I was wrong about the Ogham?" Max said scornfully.  
  
"Look, this has nothing to do with who was right and who was wrong. Either we get out or, well, you know what'll happen. And that's all that matters. So, I've figured out an alternative explanation to that Ogham. It's just that we've no way of confirming it since neither of us can read it. See, you were talking about the lack of newer texts? I've heard of Ogham being used by neo-Celtic druid religions. Maybe it's something like that. Maybe it's from the 20th century, or even the 21st."  
  
"At least it's not from the 2200's, since I can't remember hearing about such use."  
  
"...or, maybe it's just in this universe where I live. On the other hand, with a possibly infinite number of alternate universes out there, it could be anything. I mean, maybe there's a universe where Ogham's the first writing system ever invented, or one where it's the major script in use. So, it could go anywhere among those texts."  
  
"But we can't go that way. We can't start doubting everything. We'll just have to assume something, try it out, and if it's not that, then think of an explanation and try something else."  
  
"As long as the one trying it out isn't you?"  
  
"No. We'll split it, so that everyone has to do their part. And I'll join in."  
  
Well. That was something. A surprising bit of humanity. "If I may ask, why the sudden change of mind?"  
  
The look on Max's face was odd, since it was something Daniel hadn't seen before. Maybe embarrassment, or uncertainty. His words lacked much of his usual confidence. "Because... I didn't think you were going to do it, when you went on about touching the walls all alone to keep anyone else from getting hurt. I was sure you were just trying to appear better than the rest of us, knowing that we'd not let you do it anyway. But you really meant all you said, and you really did it. It was colossally stupid, of course, but you did it."  
  
Daniel didn't know what to say to that. In a way, it was a really sad confession. That Max had so completely stopped believing in people that he couldn't recognize real compassion, or real guilt and need to redeem oneself, for what they were. At least it was nice to know that something good had come out of their second failure with the walls, the needles, the anguish and the wasted time.  
  
"Well, someone had to do it. Now, about that next time. If we're going to assume the Ogham's from the 20th century or so, then there's got to be something else that's older than Kalinga. We've already tried putting Kalinga after the hieroglyphic Egyptian, and that was wrong. So, maybe the medieval notation is older than it, after all."  
  
"I could go with that," Max nodded. "First the medieval mass, then the Kalinga, then the Minbari - "  
  
"Then the post-Demotic Egyptian, the Polish - but what about the Ogham compared to the Vis Uban text?"  
  
"The last five texts are just guesswork again. If you ask me, I'd put the Ogham first, then the Vis Uban, but I've no scientific reason for that. I've got to admit you know more about both of them than I do."  
  
"But I'd try that first, as well. Ogham before the Vis Uban. And it's a guess. Let's go and try it."

* * *

  
After Jackson and Eilerson had told that they had another possible wall combination that was worth trying, Mitchell spent a while figuring out how to go on about it. Whoever did the first three didn't matter, since they knew they had them right already. For the rest, they'd take turns. He ended up having everyone's names on pieces of paper that they put in his baseball cap. Well, everyone's except for Jackson's. Jackson had objected, of course, but with everyone else uniformly agreeing on leaving him out, he didn't have much choice.   
  
Then, as if that wasn't hard enough, he'd also have to decide who'd actually draw the lots. Who'd be the executioner if they made a mistake again. It wouldn't be fair to ask that of Jackson. And there was no point in wasting time thinking this.  
  
"Here's how we'll do this. The names are in here, and we'll take turns drawing them, in alphabetical order. So, Carter picks the first name, and that'll be the person who gets the fourth wall. Jackson, mind doing the first three?"  
  
Jackson went on to touch the three they already knew. Then, with everyone staring intently, Carter took one piece of paper and unfolded it.  
  
"Teal'c," she read out aloud, and showed it to the others.  
  
He said simply, "Show me which wall I shall touch."  
  
Jackson guided him to one of the walls. "This one. It's got to be this one. Medieval neume notation."  
  
Jackson backed away. Everyone else had stayed behind, close to the ice-device, as a precaution. Except for Galen, of course, who was close by in case it'd be the wrong wall again.  
  
Without a trace of hesitation, Teal'c placed his whole palm on the wall, which lit up instantly.  
  
Four down, eight to go. Mitchell wondered if those correctly chosen walls would just keep glowing forever if they'd never touch another one again. With this Ancient technology that had already lasted for millions of years, it seemed likely.  
  
"So, next name. Eilerson's going to pick it for us."  
  
Eilerson looked pretty tense. Mitchell was surprised he'd ever agreed to put his name in that cap. At least he didn't pick up his own name.  
  
"Galen. You're next. Kalinga wall. That one," Eilerson told in a flat voice.  
  
Galen didn't hesitate either. He walked straight to the wall and pushed it. And it was right as well.  
  
It was promising. They really were making progress here. Mitchell just didn't dare say it aloud, and neither did anyone else. The primitive prejudice was too strong, the absurd fear that if someone said "Yeah, we're doing good," then the next one would go wrong.  
  
As soon as he'd done the wall, Galen walked back to grab the name of who'd come after him.  
  
"Cam," he read from the piece of paper.  
  
Mitchell nodded. He had to admit he was more than a bit afraid of this. The last time had been bad enough. And he had an overly vivid imagination when it came to inventing all kinds of awful things that might happen. But he'd never let anyone see that. Though, maybe Galen saw that he was nervous. Blood pressure going through the roof. About as nervous as he could get.  
  
"Which one?" he asked, and Daniel pointed it to him.  
  
He brushed the stone with his fingers. It felt cold. And it started to glow. Another right choice.  
  
"I know, I'm the next to draw a name," Jackson said, before Mitchell got there.   
  
When he'd picked the name and taken a look at it, he stayed silent for a suspiciously long time. Finally, he said, "Max."  
  
"Your best guess. Post-demotic Egyptian," Eilerson replied, and Jackson nodded.  
  
Eilerson was trying hard not to look timid, but for this once, he failed. He covered the short distance slowly, gazing around, and reached a visibly shaky hand towards the wall.  
  
Nothing happened.   
  
It was the wrong wall, and the lights from the other walls went off, but Eilerson just stood there, cowering.  
  
The odd calm didn't last longer than a heartbeat. All of a sudden, Galen was hauling Eilerson away from the wall and yelling urgently,  
  
"Gather around me! Now! Quickly!"  
  
Startled and puzzled, Mitchell ran to him, like everyone else. Galen let go of Eilerson, who fell to his knees, gasping and shaking all over. Either he had completely lost it, or then something bad had come from that wall after all.  
  
"Galen, what the hell just happened?" Mitchell asked.  
  
"Nerve gas. It's all around us now, but I have shielded us. We only need to wait for the air conditioning to remove it."  
  
Now that Mitchell looked around, he saw a faint, blue glow surrounding them. A force field of some kind. Looked like Galen had cast a spell, and the place hadn't blown up or anything. Maybe he could just blast his way right through a wall and get them out. But right now, Eilerson was the immediate concern.  
  
Galen had knelt down in front of him, one hand on his chest, the other holding the crystal near to him.  
  
"Am - Am I going to - to die?" Eilerson managed to stutter.  
  
"No, Maximilian. You're not going to die. I got you just in time."  
  
Mitchell knew enough about nerve gas to guess that it'd been a very close call. He gazed at the room around them, and saw nothing out of the ordinary, aside from the shimmering shield. Whatever the exact chemical composition of that gas was, it was completely colorless, invisible, and probably odorless too. If they hadn't had Galen with them, if he hadn't been able to notice it, they might've all been dead within minutes. So much for walls that only targeted the person who'd touched it.  
  
Next time, they'd have to be more careful. Mitchell just couldn't see how. There was no way they could be prepared for everything.

* * *

  
**Day Three**  
  
Daniel woke up. He had hardly slept at all.  
  
By the time Galen had finally, after a long, tedious wait, declared that the room was safe again and removed the shield, it had been really late. Though time hardly existed inside these deadly walls and the constant glow of light from the ceiling, they had all been tired. Mitchell had suggested that they'd rest for a while, and everyone had agreed. Not that they could've done anything useful in a while anyway, with Max barely conscious and clearly feeling very sick. Galen had promised it would pass, given time.  
  
Galen had also said that though he had done a shield spell, it didn't mean he would do anything else. A shield, he had explained, didn't use a lot of energy. Even though it had worked, it didn't mean that shooting fire and lighting at the walls would be a wise thing to do. They still needed to put the walls in order.  
  
Daniel doubted if any of them had really been able to sleep. He had spent most of the time lying with his eyes closed and hoping that he could get rid of all the nasty things that kept going through his head.  
  
This time, there was no one else he could blame, nothing he could say to defend himself - the mistake had been all his. His intuition about the Demotic hadn't been correct. In a way, there was symmetry. Daniel had been wrong and Max had got hurt. The previous time, it had been Max who'd been wrong about the Ogham, and Daniel had paid for it.  
  
Daniel still couldn't be sure that he wasn't infected with some gruesome Ancient biological weapon, maybe even something that might spread to everyone else as well. He didn't know how many hours, or days, for that matter, he'd have to wait, until he could be sure he hadn't caught anything from the needles. Now, he felt hypersensitive and hypochondriac. Every time he felt anything even slightly off, he'd start at it. Of course, he was feeling off most of the time, tired and sore, hungry and thirsty.  
  
He still had that last drop of water at the bottom of his canteen. He was saving it. He didn't really know why. Somehow it was a comforting thought that he still had water left, though it wasn't much good when it just stayed in there. And he wasn't sure if he was feeling thirsty just because he knew they were out of water, or if it really was the first symptom of dehydration. Or the first symptom of some alien disease.   
  
The thoughts had kept going around in circles all night. From the walls to the needles, and then to the thirst.  
  
Daniel had only realized he'd fallen asleep when he'd noticed that the ceiling was no longer even and glowing, but a huge, decorated dome, like the inside of some baroque church. And then the Veraeda had opened, except that it had looked exactly like a stargate, with the vortex and the gently rippling surface when it was open. Jack had stepped out of it, carrying a whole pot of coffee and a box of donuts. And he had yelled at Galen, "You no-good wizard-wannabe, why haven't you gotten them out yet?"  
  
Daniel opened his eyes to face the relentless smooth light from above. He got up, and noted that the Veraeda looked just as dull and gray as he had remembered. Jack definitely wasn't anywhere near to this place. Daniel wondered if he even knew something had happened to the current SG-1. They'd been out of contact with the SGC for two days already. Surely someone would've told Jack.  
  
Jack would be right there, waiting in the gate room when SG-1 returned. If they returned.  
  
Mitchell's start of the day speech was somewhat less inspired today than what it'd been last morning.  
  
"Let's see. I'm not trying to be depressing, but we're out of food and water, the Veraeda" - he pronounced the word carefully - "is not working and there's nothing really useful on the tables. Basically, this means that aside from Jackson and Eilerson, who've got the hardest job of all, there really isn't much of anything we can do, unless you two can think of something we can do for you. I guess we've just got to try and come up with interesting ways to spend time."  
  
Max was back on his feet again, though he still looked pale, and more than that, withdrawn and silent. But they'd have to keep thinking about the walls.  
  
"I don't want to try it again, I don't want to guess anymore. Not before we've got something tangible on at least a few of those mystery walls. We've got six right and six to go. There's several hundred possible ways we could arrange those six, if we just go on guessing. We'll get killed long before we get through all the possible combinations. We've got to be able to read some of them, or recognize and accurately date the scripts, something. If we don't, then we're not going out," Max said bluntly. No sign of his earlier optimism, the belief that they could find the right order through logic and intuition.  
  
"We can figure this out. We've got to. So, I was obviously wrong about the new Egyptian - it's got to be even newer than I thought. But if it's several thousands of years younger than the demotic I know, I wouln't expect it to be recognizable anymore. I mean, the difference between hieroglyphic and demotic Egyptian is so great that it's impossible to see that they're the same language without a lot of studying."  
  
"Yes, that's odd, isn't it?" Max replied absently. "I think I'm going to work on the Ogham some more. Last night, I had this idea that if it's actually contemporary to you, then it might not be in ancient Irish at all. Maybe it's in modern English. So, I'm going to try and decipher it as if it is. See if something comes out of it that way."  
  
"And I'm going back to my demotic, for starters," Daniel stated, and each went to work on their chosen walls.   
  
The symmetry was still there. They had both chosen the walls that they had been wrong about. Both were trying to fix their mistakes.  
  
Daniel was pretty certain about the bits he had managed to translate so far. The parts he hadn't been able to translate before still escaped him. He spent hours staring at the wall. All he got from it was a headache. A pretty nasty one, too.  
  
Mitchell appeared by his side and put something into his palm. He looked at it. Aspirin. He cast a puzzled glance at Mitchell.  
  
"Figured you'd need it. My head's about to split, and I thought you're probably not feeling a whole lot better. First symptoms of dehydration, you know. Galen was friendly enough to let me know that you and I'd be facing it first, since we both lost some blood earlier, and he wasn't able to fix it completely."  
  
Daniel had had the uncomfortable feeling that Galen was staring at him, had been staring at him ever since he'd gotten the needles out. Looking for signs of - something. Well, dehydration was bad, but at least it wasn't contagious.  
  
"Now he's telling us," he said cynically.  
  
"Yeah, that's what I thought too."  
  
Mitchell stayed there for a while, but didn't say anything. Probably didn't want to ask how the translation was going, because he could guess it wasn't going well. Daniel was glad he didn't.  
  
Daniel looked at the pill still on his palm. His mouth felt so dry and his throat so sore that there was no way he could manage to dry swallow it. This was probably as good a moment as any to drink that last mouthful of water. He knew the headache wouldn't stay away for long, but maybe even a moment's relief would allow him to figure out something about the walls. He emptied his canteen and swallowed the aspirin.  
  
He turned his gaze to the wall again, the symbols that carried no signs of Greek influence, the symbols that were all too close to demotic Egyptian letters. They were neatly written, much neater than than any demotic text Daniel had ever seen. Almost unnaturally neat. Each time the same letter was repeated, it was exactly the same, without even the slightest fluctuation typical to handwritten text. It was like - now that he thought of it - it probably wasn't handwritten at all. It was printed, or typed. In some universe, Egyptians had invited book printing, or who knew, maybe even typewriters, or computers. And perhaps that had caused the script to stay as it was for a long period of time.  
  
The problem was, even though Daniel could offer such a plausible explanation to the writing, he was still no closer to dating it.

* * *

  
Mitchell had suggested strip poker, but everyone had declined, except for Teal'c, and since he knew he'd lose to Teal'c, they had settled for "Go Fish" instead.   
  
Mitchell quickly found out that Galen could beat everyone every time, even Teal'c. As if he could see right through the cards. For all Mitchell knew, maybe he could. It really wouldn't be all that surprising.  
  
"Perhaps we should attempt a game that is not played with cards," Teal'c proposed.  
  
"Truth or dare?" Mitchell tried.  
  
"I think I shall take a break from all this playing," Galen said, and walked away, to poke at something on one of the tables.  
  
They fell silent for a while. That hated silence again.  
  
Almost out of nowhere, Eilerson's voice suddenly broke the oppressed quiet. "No! No! We're never going to solve this. We're dead. We're all dead. Thirst or traps, don't know which comes first! We can't possibly hope to understand the slightest bit of writing when we know nothing of it, nothing at all. No idea of context, no idea of the language - nothing! We're dead."  
  
And then he was standing right in front of Galen, fisted hands in front of him, face red and twisted with anger. "And you! You damn techno-mage - now, when for once you could really be helpful - and what are you doing? Nothing! Just like the rest of them! Can't cast one single spell to get us out - you'll just let us all die-"  
  
Galen's face stayed stern and cool, but he reached with his hand and grasped Eilerson's shirtfront. "Maximilian!" he boomed, and Eilerson fell silent. "You would have me risk a spell at the walls? You would choose a quick and certain death above the possibility of survival? I would gladly give that to you, but there are more of us here. The universe does not turn around you. You remember what happened when I came to contact with the Veraeda-"  
  
Galen fell silent in mid-sentence, frowning. Without explaining, he turned his back to Eilerson and walked to the ice-device. As everyone else watched in silence, he ran his fingers along its surface, traced the silvery casing on one side, and finally knelt to place his hand on the ZPM, eyes closed in concentration.  
  
The Veraeda flashed into life, the opaque surface became transparent and ice-like. In a blink, it was gone, gray again. Galen had lifted his hand away.  
  
"Maximilian, we're not going to die here. Not in this room, at least not in this universe. I cannot believe I never thought of this before. Though the Zero-Point Module may be broken, there is still a source of zero-point energy here that's available to us. Myself."  
  
"Wait! You said you're not exactly compatible with Ancient technology - how can you be sure that you can power it up, instead of just causing some kind of a short circuit? Is this somehow different from doing something to the walls?" Carter asked.  
  
Mitchell suddenly realized that Galen had already touched a wall without any consequences. No short circuit there either. Maybe it was the same thing. Or then, maybe it just had to do with what the walls were like. Maybe they weren't as sensitive to such conflict as the Veraeda. Once again, it wasn't like Galen was going to tell them if he knew it.  
  
Galen didn't even give a straight answer to Carter's question. "This is entirely different. Because of what this device is like. It is..." he said, and shook his head. "No, you would not understand. Even if you would, I would not tell you."  
  
"But - Galen, didn't you say that even if we could go through the Veraeda, we'd just find ourselves in another sealed Dodecagon-room?" Jackson joined in the conversation.  
  
"Yes, that's what will happen. Still, it gives us hope. How many walls have you been able to identify here, for certain, without guessing?"  
  
Jackson grimaced. Not many, Mitchell knew that. And then, Jackson's face lit up with something, an idea, and a hopeful one, if Mitchell could read it correctly.  
  
"A new set of texts is generated every time something triggers the lockdown - so, we can just go through the Veraeda, and see what the texts are like in that universe. If we recognize more than here, then we've got a better chance of solving them. And if we don't, we can always go through it again..."  
  
Even Eilerson was looking hopeful now. "That could work. It really could."  
  
"Pack your things, people. We're taking a trip through the mother of all quantum mirrors," Mitchell declared.  
  
Packing their things didn't take all that long. In a matter of minutes, the members of SG-1 were standing in front of the Veraeda with their packs. Eilerson and Galen hadn't had much of anything with them when they'd first accidentally come through the mirror.  
  
"You know, Feiara mentioned in her diary that the Veraeda's capacity is limited," Jackson noted. "On the other hand, she was talking about the whole of the Duodecim going through it. Twelve people. There's only six of us."  
  
"I'm not saying that this is safe. It is awfully risky for all of you. Also, I can't tell what kind of an effect powering the Veraeda will have on me," Galen warned.  
  
Mitchell remembered Galen had been knocked out the last time, though he hadn't even touched the device himself, just contacted it through Eilerson. He really hoped this wouldn't turn out to be a one way trip for him.  
  
"Now, I want each of you to place one hand on the device, and the person closest to me must give their other hand to me. I need to touch the ZPM in order to access the Veraeda's technology."  
  
They lined up in front of the device. Mitchell purposely placed himself nearest to Galen and put a hand on his shoulder.  
  
"Go ahead, when you're ready," he told him.  
  
The surface of the Veraeda turned into ice again. It felt like ice as well, perfectly smooth and slick. Mitchell had the oddest feeling that his hand was sliding on the surface, though he could see it wasn't moving. It was as if there was no friction at all between the surface and his palm. The feeling spread outwards from it, enveloping his entire body.  
  
He was flowing, like water in a river. He was liquid. Liquid electricity, like he had thought when the Veraeda had opened and the odd wave of energy had hit them.  
  
Then something forced him to stop. He was no longer flowing.   
  
The liquid that he had become was freezing. It was so cold.  
  
It seemed to last forever.  
  
In an abrupt snap, the odd feelings disappeared.  
  
Mitchell was standing in front of the Veraeda again, staring at a matted gray surface that felt coarse against his palm.

* * *

  
They'd made it through. They were - somewhere. In some alternate universe.  
  
Daniel wondered how they'd ever get back to their own universe, even if they managed to open the doors here. If they'd get the doors open, they wouldn't be able to activate the mirror again, because that would close the doors again. But even if they wouldn't be able to go home, at least they'd live on. Maybe in some universe completely alien to them, but they'd live. If they got the doors open, and found a way out of this Ancient space station.  
  
Everyone else was slowly starting to move around him, Teal'c to his right and Sam to his left. It looked like everyone was all right. Even Max, though he was probably more than a bit embarrassed because of his desperate outburst in the previous room. But if it hadn't been for that, Galen might not have figured out that he could power up the Veraeda.  
  
Daniel couldn't see Galen from where he was, so he backed away to get a wider view.  
  
The techno-mage was lying on the floor, eyes open but eerily unmoving, like those of a dead body. Mitchell was checking him out.  
  
"He's alive. Vitals seem stable. He's just totally out of it, completely unresponsive," Mitchell told them. "We knew that using the device would probably do something to him. I guess all we can do is keep an eye on him and hope he comes out of it sooner or later. In the mean time, Jackson, Eilerson, go and take a look at the walls. See if they're any better here. Wherever here might be."  
  
Daniel gazed at the surrounding room. The size and shape of it were awfully familiar, but there were major differences. There were no tables. None at all. Nothing else in the room than the Veraeda on its pedestal, and then, a dark form on the floor behind it, near the wall. He walked over to take a closer look.  
  
As soon as he got within a few steps, he realized what it was, and called to the others, "Guys, I think you need to see this."  
  
It was a mummy, or a mummified corpse, to be exact. Oddly enough, the first image it called to his mind was not that of the Egyptian mummies so familiar to him, but that of the Linvris. The minor Goa'uld lords killed by Machello's devices. Coming through a stargate in his closet. Haunting him, until his friends had taken him for mad and put him in the mental ward. It had happened years ago, and it really wasn't something he wanted to think about right now. He pushed it away, and looked at this corpse more closely.  
  
Actually, it didn't look anything like a Goa'uld. It clearly wasn't human. The parched skin still had patches of different greens and browns. Instead of a nose, it had a snout with a set of horns on it, and there were several more horns on its hairless head. It didn't have ears, only holes in their place. The hands had long, curved claws. It was wearing what looked like a space suit of some kind. As far as Daniel could see, there were no signs of any kind of injuries, nothing to tell how it had died. Maybe it had hit a nerve gas wall. Or something else they had been lucky enough to avoid so far.  
  
"Daniel, stay away from it," Sam warned.  
  
"I'm definitely not going to start poking at it."  
  
"What is it, anyway?" Mitchell asked.  
  
"It reminds me of the prehistoric beasts known as dinosaurs."  
  
"Yes, Teal'c - that's what I thought as well... What if it really is that? If we're in a universe where dinosaurs never became extinct, and evolved into humanoid creatures of some sort, even developed space travel - maybe humans never came to be in this universe," Daniel thought aloud.  
  
"Yeah, it's amazing, but it doesn't help us, unless we get out and actually have to face these things. Jackson, the walls. Please. Now," Mitchell said, his tone cold and commanding, different from anything he'd said to Daniel during the last few days. His face looked tense, with dark circles under the eyes, and stubble covering most of his chin. Really tired, with a bad headache, Daniel could guess. And anxious and worried of his team. Jack sometimes started snapping at people too in similar situations. It was perfectly understandable.  
  
Daniel could just imagine what he looked like himself. Probably not much better than Mitchell. He ran his hand along his cheek. Coarse with long stubble. Just when he'd gotten rid of that beard a week or so ago. He was tired too, since he hadn't slept a whole lot during the last two days. His T-shirt was still full of tiny holes from the needles. What little help the aspirin had offered had worn off quickly, and the headache hadn't just returned, it had spread out - most of his body felt vaguely achy now, muscles and joints protesting every time he moved. And he felt a bit dizzy, but it mostly stayed away when he ignored it. He wondered if it had something to do with the trip through the Veraeda, or if it was just all about the inevitable dehydration.  
  
He lifted his gaze from the humanoid dinosaur and looked at the wall behind it. It was carved with Maya hieroglyphs. He might not be able to translate it, but he was pretty certain he could figure out a dating. He went on, following the walls counter-clockwise.

* * *

  
In some other circumstances, Mitchell might've found the mummified dino interesting, but now, he thought it was far from it. When Teal'c and Carter had stayed near it, he'd returned to sit on the pedestal at the foot of the ice-device, keeping an eye on Galen.  
  
He'd sat there for half an hour, when Galen suddenly came to and spoke up.  
  
"Did it work?" he asked.  
  
"Yeah, it worked. I can't be really sure we're in another universe, but at least we're in a room with different walls. Jackson and Eilerson haven't told if they can figure it out yet. How're you doing?"  
  
"Fine, for now. If we must go through again, I can do it. I must do it, actually, since, as you may have noticed, the Veraeda in this room is now broken as well."  
  
"Yeah, Sam took a look at it and said that the ZPM's melted, just like the last time you came through."  
  
"It cannot be avoided, I'm afraid. I'm also afraid that if there is a next time, I'll be out longer. How much longer, I can't tell."  
  
"What's it do to you anyway? Should we be worried?"  
  
"I can take care of myself. If we come to a point where I can't, I'll ask for help. You see, my tech - the technology I use, that is - was not exactly built for this kind of use. It is... It is closely connected to my system. And it seems that when it meets this sort of unusual, unexpected stress, it comes through as a great physical strain on my body. I need time to recover from it."  
  
Mitchell wondered what that really meant. "Closely connected" to his body. Combined with how he had said, or showed, earlier that it was in his hands and his head, Mitchell could only come to one conclusion. The technology was inside him. In his body. Implants of some sort, or cybernetic parts. Maybe he was a cyborg, or something like that. It would explain how he could connect to the mirror so easily.  
  
"It's not like it's going to kill you, is it?"  
  
"There will be a limit. Sooner or later, it will be too much. Not yet, though. I can take us through the device several times more. Of that I'm certain."  
  
Carter and Teal'c returned from the corpse and sat down on the pedestal as well.  
  
"Galen, I've been wondering," Carter started. "Daniel told me he'd read from one of the Ancient diaries that the Veraeda is thought-controlled. Did you control it? Did you tell it where to put us?"  
  
"I did not control it. I was not the one using it, I was simply the power cell. The battery. Nothing more."  
  
"Then who did? Who decided where we were going?" Mitchell was baffled. He'd thought Galen had been in control, and that he'd have at least a vague idea of where they were.  
  
Galen looked mildly amused. "No one. We went right were it wanted to take us."

* * *

  
The second-last wall had caught Daniel's attention for a good while. It was another of those really annoying cases of "I've seen this before, but can't name it right now." And he was so certain that if he ever told that to Max, Max would instantly tell him what it was. Still, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't come up with anything. The ever-present, slowly worsening aches and nausea didn't make it a whole lot easier.  
  
Finally, he gave up. Max had probably already finished his round, and was waiting for him so they could compare what they had. Daniel looked at the last wall. Nothing like he'd ever seen before. Once again. It looked like a bunch of stars with different numbers of rays. They were drawn at the exact same intervals from each other both horizontally and vertically, so he couldn't even guess which way the script was supposed to be read.  
  
"So?" Max's voice came directly from behind him.  
  
Daniel turned around and shrugged. "I don't think it's any better than the first room. I can give accurate dates for two texts, a bit hazier for three, there's two I think I know but can't actually name or date. The rest don't say a thing to me."  
  
Max crossed his arms and shook his head. "I recognize six of them, more or less, but I can't even date all of them. The other six I've never seen before. If we stay here, we'll have to keep guessing. Six or seven out of twelve is about the same than what we had last time."  
  
It was depressing - that they had traveled to this alien universe just to find out that it was no better than their own. At least they could always try another one. Sooner or later, they'd probably come to a universe where they'd be able to figure out the walls. It'd just have to be sooner, because they wouldn't be able to go on all that long.  
  
The linguists had no choice but to go and tell the others the bad news.  
  
"So, we'll just go through again. As soon as possible. Galen?" Mitchell said as soon as they'd told him.  
  
"We can go right away. Just gather around the device."  
  
Daniel placed his hand on the uneven surface, waiting for it to come to life again.

* * *

  
Mitchell massaged his temples. If he could just get rid of this headache. Combined with the constant waiting, without anything useful to do, it made him extremely irritated. He kept snapping at people when he really didn't mean to.  
  
"We have still not tried playing Truth or dare, Colonel Mitchell. Perhaps that would help us pass time," Teal'c suggested.  
  
Mitchell sighed and let his hands fall on his lap. They were sitting on the pedestal again, he, Carter and Teal'c, with Galen lying in a heap on the floor. It felt awful, watching him end up like that so they could travel through the device, but they didn't have much choice. Carter had closed Galen's eyes. That lifeless stare had felt way too scary in this grim place. He'd been out for over an hour already, and Jackson and Eilerson had spent all that time gazing at the walls and talking in low voices. No news from them yet.  
  
The room was just like the previous one. No tables here, either. The only difference was that there were no dead dinos around. No sign that anyone had ever lived here. Nothing that'd reveal anything about the universe they were in. And nothing new to see, nothing even distantly interesting to do.  
  
"Right... This really isn't the time and place I'd pick for that, T, but it's not like we've got anything better to do. Sam, you in?"  
  
"As long as you don't dare me to kiss Max."  
  
"So, who's starting?"  
  
"I shall begin. Truth or dare, Colonel Mitchell?"  
  
"Dare. Of course."  
  
"In that case, I dare you to make up a song of our current situation, in the melodramatic opera style."  
  
No matter how tired and thirsty he was, Mitchell laughed out loud at that.

* * *

  
Daniel jumped at the unexpected sound of laughter from where the rest of the team was waiting. He didn't see anything funny anywhere around. Instead, he was starting to get really depressed.  
  
He felt awful, and this room was hopeless. He'd recognized one text as South Iberian script, something that really wasn't all that familiar to him. Now, after spending all too much time trying to figure out seven other walls without any success, he'd come across one that he knew all too well. It was the only one of the scripts of the four great races that he didn't know. The writing of the Furlings, that one race that remained a complete mystery to them. He had no idea when they had been around, or if they still were, so he couldn't even begin to guess the dating for the text.  
  
He felt something flowing from his nose, and absently wiped it away with his finger. It was blood. Probably not a good sign. Dehydration gone so far that the nasal membranes were dried and cracking. He dug a tissue from his pocket and pinched his nose with it, hoping he could stop the flow before someone noticed. No need to get the others worried.  
  
The last remaining walls were just as bad as the majority of them. No chance. None at all.  
  
He hid the tissue in his fist and faced Max.  
  
"It's no good. There's the Ancient text, like in the previous rooms, but from the others, I can only recognize two. That's three out of all the twelve walls. And out of those three, I can only date two."  
  
"That's two more than what I have," Max said meekly.  
  
"Surely you've got to know that one? Iberian script?"  
  
"Right... I knew I'd seen that before, somewhere..."  
  
They both chuckled, dryly and mirthlessly. It was turning out to be a bad joke between them. Seen it before, but can't name it.  
  
They walked over to join the rest of the team by the Veraeda.  
  
"Sam, Teal'c, Cam... Bad news again. I'm sorry," Daniel shook his head. "This is worse than the two rooms we've seen before."  
  
"Galen still hasn't come around. We've got to wait a while longer," Mitchell answered.

* * *

  
"So, Daniel, truth or dare?" Mitchell asked.  
  
Mitchell figured he should come up with something funny. Jackson really looked like he could use some cheering up. He had curled up with his arms on his knees and his head on his arms, withdrawn into himself. Actually, he looked like he needed a supportive arm around his shoulders, or at least a pat on the back, but still, though almost a full day had passed since that nasty incident with the needles, no one was particularly willing to touch him. Especially now that Galen was out, unable to warn them if there really was something to worry about.  
  
Jackson lifted his head, but just a bit. "Truth, I guess," he said.  
  
Now that he tried to think of a question, Mitchell found it surprisingly hard. Favorite food? Certainly not. Something about Vala? No, that wouldn't be nice. He came up with a useful serious question instead. A bit unfair, maybe, taking advantage of the game like this, but it was perfectly within the rules.  
  
"All right. I've got a really good question for all of you. But since it's Daniel's turn, he goes first. How're you doing?"  
  
"That's the question?" Jackson looked up. Mitchell noted that there was dried blood under his nose.  
  
"Remember, you've got to tell the truth."  
  
"Right. Well. I've been better, but I've been worse, too," Jackson answered. "Don't feel nearly as bad as I did after the first wall."  
  
Mitchell thought that sounded pretty believable. "Had a nosebleed?" he asked.  
  
"I thought you only get to ask one question."  
  
"So, it's not a part of the game anymore."  
  
Jackson sighed and shrugged. "Okay, yes. So, I had a nosebleed. No big deal, right? Happens with dehydration."  
  
Mitchell raised his eyebrows at Carter, searching for confirmation that it was just that, not a hint of something worse. She gave it, with a nod and a few words. "It's not unexpected, really. But..." she fell silent, looking uneasy.   
  
Carter clearly didn't want to talk this over in front of Jackson. Mitchell could think of several things to fill in after that "but", such as worry over the fact that Jackson was starting to look this bad this soon. This place wasn't particularly warm or dry, so he'd have expected them to survive several days without water. Maybe he'd been too optimistic.  
  
"So, Sam, how're you doing, then?"  
  
"Better than you, sir, I dare say."  
  
Mitchell couldn't argue with that. Though actually, he wasn't doing that bad, right now. Either his headache wasn't as bad now as it'd been a while ago, or then he'd just started getting used to it. But, as the one asking the questions, he wasn't going to discuss that with the others. Instead, he turned to Teal'c.  
  
"Teal'c?"   
  
"Currently I am fine. However, my supply of tretonin will soon be entirely spent."  
  
That didn't need any more explaining. They all understood what it meant. As a Jaffa, Teal'c was probably the strongest and healthiest of them at the moment, but without the symbiote-replacing drug, he would get sick and die. And Mitchell could bet Teal'c wouldn't want to talk about that, so he left it there.  
  
"Max? How're you?"  
  
When it came to Eilerson, Mitchell was mostly worried about how he was handling this mentally. Not too well, if the way he'd started shouting at Galen in the first room gave any clue.  
  
"Just great, but ask me again tomorrow, and I might be dead," Eilerson's sarcastic answer summed up what everyone else probably thought.  
  
"And as to our last team member..." Mitchell said, moving over to see to the techno-mage.  
  
Galen's eyes opened before Mitchell got there. He sat up and asked,  
  
"Cameron? Any luck?"  
  
"Afraid not. Apparently this is the worst room so far. So, if you're all right, then we're ready to go as soon as you are."  
  
Galen spent a while gazing at the surrounding room, turning his head slowly. Probably taking the time to scan and process whatever he saw. Maybe Mitchell was just imagining, but he thought Galen stared at Jackson for a longer time than at the rest of them.  
  
"I can't tell how long I'll be out next time, but that's inevitable. We must go right now."  
  
They lined up at the side of the Veraeda for the third time. Going through it was already starting to feel like a familiar thing. Mitchell knew what to expect. Staring into the ice, flowing, then freezing, until that sudden strange flash when everything returned to normal again, and the surface lost its sheen.  
  
Of course, once it was over, the first thing to do was to see that everyone else had got through, and then go check on Galen.  
  
"Everyone here? All right. Jackson, Eilerson, you know your job," Mitchell told them, and knelt to the unconscious techno-mage.  
  
"Looks like it's getting worse every time. Pulse is around 180, and breathing sounds like he's just run a world record sprint. Sam, care to give me a second opinion?"

* * *

  
Daniel kept both his hands on the surface of the Veraeda, leaning against it. Blood was trickling down his face again. He could taste it when he licked his lips. Though they were through already, he still felt like the world was spinning around him.  
  
He heard Mitchell tell that they knew their job. Daniel sure did. He knew everything depended on him and Max. He heard Mitchell's worried words from Galen's side. Galen couldn't take many more trips through the device. And Teal'c was running out of tretonin. Daniel couldn't believe he'd been so busy feeling dehydrated that he hadn't even thought of it. That running out of water wasn't the only thing that'd get to Teal'c. They had to get out. Soon. Very soon. Daniel had to get them out. He had to get to the walls and figure them out.  
  
Daniel let go of the Veraeda and started making his way towards the nearest wall. The room wouldn't stay still around him. He couldn't step straight, he could hardly stay up. He wondered if this really was what he was supposed to feel like. He didn't feel dehydrated, he felt like he was suffering of a really, really bad bout of flu.  
  
He was near enough to the wall. He squinted at the text. The writing looked familiar. Runes. Futhark. He'd have to read it to see whether it was in Proto-Norse, or if it was actually Asgard. Shouldn't be impossible to date. If he could manage it. He had to.  
  
Next wall. It didn't look familiar.  
  
A few steps forward, with odd aches stabbing at his feet. Another unfamiliar text.  
  
The next wall was in Ancient. He'd known to expect that. He had to move on.  
  
Without warning, an overwhelming spell of dizziness struck him. Instinctively, he groped for support, and felt his hand contact something hard.  
  
In the fraction of a second, he understood what it was. God, no!  
  
He yanked his hand away, stumbled backwards, lost his balance and fell. Right into Teal'c's arms.  
  
"What happened? What'd it do? Nothing hit me... Not nerve gas again, is it?" he uttered to Teal'c's shoulder.  
  
Teal'c obviously hadn't got what he said, or hadn't heard, or understood. Instead, he had placed his hand on Daniel's forehead.  
  
"Your body temperature appears to be much above that of a normal, healthy person. Why did you not tell us that you were unwell, Daniel Jackson?"  
  
"Teal'c, never mind, it doesn't matter now! God, I hit the wall! Teal'c, we've got to take cover!"  
  
Daniel tried to put one foot in front of the other, but it was so hard that Teal'c had to carry most of his weight. Besides, if it really was nerve gas again, and Galen was still out, they had nowhere to run. He felt sick. Even worse than before.  
  
"Teal'c, Teal'c, let go, let me down," he pleaded urgently. Maybe Teal'c saw what was about to happen, because he did that without questioning.  
  
Daniel fell down to all fours and threw up. He hadn't thought there would be anything left that could come out, but, of course, he had been wrong.  
  
He pushed himself away from the stain and slumped to the floor, fighting to catch his breath. Blood again. He was throwing up blood. As confused as he was, he was pretty sure it couldn't be just dehydration. He'd caught something from the needles, after all. He was sure of it. And he was probably contagious too. Then everyone else would get it and they'd all be sick.  
  
He was vaguely aware of the others gathering around him, felt someone's fingers on the side of his neck - Were they completely out of their minds?  
  
"No, no! Don't touch me! Get away from me! And the wall! Get away from the wall!" he cried out at them, and fought his way up from the floor. He could still get up. He could still take a few steps. He made his way to the pedestal and sat down, burying his head in his hands.  
  
"What wall, Jackson? What wall's he talking about?" Mitchell was asking.  
  
"Daniel Jackson accidentally touched a wall as he began feeling ill," Teal'c told him.  
  
"It's not glowing - can't have been the right one - did it do this to him?"  
  
"I do not think so, Colonel Mitchell. I did not see anything coming out of the wall."  
  
"Daniel? Daniel, talk to me - what's wrong? What's going on?" Sam's soothing voice came right from his side. She was too near. She shouldn't be coming anywhere near him. He edged away from her.  
  
"Don't touch me, Sam, you'll get it too. It's the needles, Sam. It's... Something. Something bad. And I hit the wall, and I... I don't know what's going to happen to us," he rambled.   
  
She looked at him, lips pursed and eyes wide with worry, but she stayed away. She knew he was right.  
  
And then he heard Max's voice saying, "Is it just me or is it getting a bit chilly in here?"  
  
It was cold. It really was. Daniel was shivering, and he didn't think it was just the fever.  
  
"Indeed, the ambient temperature appears to be falling rapidly," Teal'c confirmed.  
  
That was what the wall had done. It hadn't hit Daniel. It had hit them all. Unless they could get out fast, they'd freeze to death.  
  
Mitchell was clearly fighting to remain in control of the situation. "Eilerson? You finished with the walls already?"  
  
"At a quick check, I could recognize four, maybe five. Not enough, unless Daniel's got more luck."  
  
"No... I don't think so," he told them.  
  
"Then we've got to wake up Galen," Mitchell said. "And Sam, Teal'c - get all our blankets, sleeping bags, and everyone's jackets. Jackson, just try and relax."  
  
That had to be one of the most stupid, useless pieces of advice Daniel had ever got. Try and relax, when he might've gotten them all killed - again - several times over - how was he supposed to get over that?  
  
Sam gave him his jacket and his sleeping bag. They hadn't been wearing their jackets since they had got stuck in their own universe. The temperature in the Dodecagon had always been pleasant and perfectly steady. Always, until he'd done the unthinkable and hit that wall. He got the jacket on and got into the sleeping bag.  
  
"Galen! Galen! Wake up! We've got to go!" Mitchell was yelling furiously, but apparently, without success.  
  
It was getting colder so fast, Daniel couldn't tell apart his feverish feelings and the drop in room temperature. He felt like he was going to be sick again, and fell down to lay on his side, but luckily, wondrously, the feeling passed. No more blood, for now. He just stayed there, lying very still, hoping that the room would settle down, stop whirling around him.  
  
Someone was wrapping a blanket around him. It didn't help a whole lot. His teeth were chattering.  
  
Now he heard Max's voice, shouting at Galen, trying to rouse him.  
  
Daniel felt someone's back against his, then an arm around him, drawing him closer. Befuddled, he looked around, and saw that they were all gathered in a heap in front of the Veraeda, covered in blankets and sleeping bags.  
  
"No - can't - too close - you'll get sick too," he tried to tell the others, and tried to squirm away, but they wouldn't listen.  
  
"Look, Daniel!" Mitchell was speaking in that commanding tone again. "We're still all in this together. If we share body heat, we just might survive long enough to worry about getting sick."  
  
Daniel was too tired to argue. He just lay there, shivering all over, hoping for it all to end, but it wouldn't. Every time he thought it couldn't get any colder, thought that he was deep frozen from head to toes already, it got worse. Soon he was so cold and tired that he'd even stopped shivering.  
  
He had completely lost track of time. He heard the others talking about something, now and then, felt them moving about, talking again, but he couldn't even tell their voices apart.  
  
"Daniel, give me your hand," Sam said right into his ear. He didn't dare think it meant what he supposed it meant. He struggled to get a hand out of the sleeping bag. When he did, he felt Sam's hands guiding his, until it touched the surface of the Veraeda. It felt like ice, but he couldn't know if it was because it really was crusted with it, or if it was open.  
  
And then it wasn't the room that was spinning anymore, but him. He was fluctuating, flowing, water. They were going to live, if only for a while longer. They were going through the Veraeda again.

* * *

  
A new universe. A new room. The air against Mitchell's face was no longer freezing, but he was still cold, chilled to the core. His head felt foggy, but one thought remained clear as crystal. He had to know if all had made it through. He had to know if everyone was alive.  
  
"Teal'c?"  
  
"I am here."  
  
"Sam?"  
  
"Mmmh... Yeah," her answer was vague, sounding like someone who was half-asleep and didn't want to wake up. But she was alive.  
  
"Daniel?"  
  
No answer. Mitchell forced his frozen hand to move. He knew Jackson was the one resting against his right side. With all the fabric they had wrapped themselves in, it wasn't easy to maneuver his hand into Jackson's sleeping bag. In the meantime, he went on asking,  
  
"Eilerson?"  
  
"Someone call the cryo technician, please..." he mumbled.  
  
"Who's nearest to Galen?"  
  
"I can see to him, Colonel Mitchell," Teal'c answered.  
  
Mitchell had managed to get his fingers to Jackson's neck, but they were so cold-numb that he couldn't feel anything at all. Couldn't tell if it was just him, or if there really was nothing to feel.  
  
Holding his breath, he reached a bit further, placing his hand on Jackson's icy chest. It felt like a ridiculous idea to begin with that anyone so cold could be still alive. Yet he was. Mitchell felt one beat, and after a second that felt like an hour, another, so very slow, but steady. More than that, he felt that frozen chest rise and fall slightly. Jackson was breathing. He was alive. Maybe just barely, but alive nevertheless.  
  
When Teal'c informed him that "Galen is alive, but again unconscious and unresponsive," Mitchell couldn't help smiling a bit. All here, all alive. If they'd survived that, surely they'd be able to get out. And now that he knew that, he could close his eyes and rest for a while. Not sleep. He couldn't sleep, not now, not when they were all lying in a heap in front of the Veraeda, probably seriously hypothermic, and more and worse than that when it came to Jackson and Galen.  
  
He knew he shouldn't sleep.  
  
And before he realized it, he'd drifted into a deep, dreamless slumber.

* * *

  
**Day Four  
  
** Mitchell had grown vaguely aware of the annoying feeling that his right hand was a lot warmer than his left. His left foot had fallen asleep because a heavy weight lay on it, and something hard was pressed against his shoulder.  
  
With a start, he realized why, and was instantly wide awake. He shouldn't have fallen asleep. He had no idea how long he had slept. Carter's elbow was digging into his shoulder, and Eilerson's feet rested on his. His right hand was still on Jackson's chest, which was no longer icy, but burning hot. The slow, weak but steady heartbeat had given way to alarmingly fast pounding. And there wasn't much he could do about it.  
  
Mitchell pulled his hand away and climbed up, disentangling himself both from the people and the fabrics that had kept them warm. He wasn't cold anymore, so maybe sleeping had been a good thing, but he had wasted time, his headache was worse, and he felt a bit dizzy. It looked like everyone else was still asleep, except for Teal'c, who was sitting next to Galen.  
  
"T - why didn't you wake me up?"  
  
"I attempted to do so several times, and received no answer, except for approximately one hour ago, when you told me to 'Bug off'."  
  
He really didn't remember doing that. "Right. So I slept for over an hour?"  
  
"Several hours. The others have been asleep as well. I forced myself to remain awake so I could be certain all were well."  
  
"But they're not."  
  
"I am greatly concerned for both Daniel Jackson and Galen. At one time, I was afraid Galen might have stopped breathing, but he resumed on his own. Still, he has not shown any signs of regaining consciousness, and he remains colder than is normal. As for Daniel Jackson, his body temperature has been climbing steadily higher, and he has spoken in his sleep, but I could not make out what he was saying."  
  
Mitchell was greatly concerned for both of them as well. He'd known this would be bad for Galen, since they'd forced him to wake up too soon and to power up the device again before he'd fully recovered from the previous time. Now he only hoped they wouldn't need to use it again, since he was pretty sure that'd be the last time for the techno-mage. And Jackson... Mitchell couldn't know what exactly was wrong with him without Galen's help, but it definitely didn't look good.  
  
As for the rest, it was about time they woke up.  
  
"Teal'c, we need to get out. Since I'm all right, maybe we can suppose Eilerson is, too. Let's wake him up. And Sam as well."  
  
"Indeed. But before that, there is also something in this room that you should see."  
  
For the first time, Mitchell turned his eyes away from his team and looked at the room. The walls. The roof. Jeez. He'd never understood people who were seriously claustrophobic, but this place made him sympathize with them. The walls were too near. He could just imagine them closing in on them. He shook his head and concentrated on things other than the walls.  
  
This room was different from the three previous ones, which had been mostly empty. It looked exactly like the first room, the one in their own universe. There were tables around the Veraeda, and there was a lot of stuff on them, just like he remembered. But there was something else, things on the floor that hadn't existed in the first room. Four piles of clothes, awfully familiar in design - SGC uniforms, with bones sticking out of the sleeves, and skulls with empty eye sockets staring right at Mitchell. A pair of glasses rested on the floor next to one of them.  
  
He covered the distance to them on shaky feet. They weren't necessarily who he thought they were. He knelt next to the first body, or the remains of one, with the glasses on the floor. They looked awfully familiar. The uniforms didn't have name patches. Neither had the one Mitchell was wearing. He walked over to the next set of bones and clothes, and noticed the dog tags still hanging from the skeletal neck. He didn't know if it was a good idea to touch these remains, but he had to know. He knelt to take a closer look.  
  
The dog tags read O'Neill.  
  
They weren't far from home anymore. Out of all the infinite possibilities, they'd landed in a universe that was a twisted version of their own. One where their counterparts hadn't been nearly as lucky. And the thought that a team lead by Jack O'Neill had died, while his team still lived, made Mitchell feel very strange.

* * *

  
A loud, unpleasant voice cut into Daniel's hazy mind.  
  
"Eilerson. Eilerson! Come on! I don't care whether you want to wake up or not. We need you. We need you to look at those walls. Right now. Just get up, damn it!"  
  
He hoped they'd just stop shouting. Whoever that Eilerson was and whatever they needed him for, Daniel didn't care right now.  
  
The persistent voice just wouldn't go away.  
  
Daniel opened his eyes. A steady white glow shined down from the ceiling. The same glow he'd been watching for three days now. He was in the Dodecagon. Stuck. They needed to figure out the walls. He'd failed. He'd failed it over and over again, and now he had an Ancient disease that would kill them all. But they should've been dead already anyway, frozen to death - he'd already killed them when he'd hit that wall.  
  
Were they all still alive, really? And how could they be? He tried to ask it aloud, but all he could manage was a pathetic croak.  
  
"...alive?"  
  
"Daniel? Yes, you're alive, we're all alive. We're in a new universe," Sam answered his vague question. He turned his head slightly and saw her sitting next to him, looking a bit lost, somehow.  
  
They were in a new universe, with a new set of walls. They'd have to get out. It was Daniel's job just as much as Max's, so why hadn't they been shouting at him? He'd have to see the walls, translate and date them if he could.   
  
He tried to get up, but the sudden movement made him feel so much worse all he could do was roll over and retch. Blood again.  
  
Sam had placed a hand on his shoulder, and he was too tired to try and get away from her. He had the vaguest memory of someone's hand resting on his chest. They had touched him already, they had been too close to him, and there was nothing he could do to prevent them from getting this too.  
  
Sam helped him lay back again, and even took off his glasses. He closed his eyes, trying to keep his breathing under control. The traces of blood and bile stung his dry mouth. He could've given anything for a glass - or a whole canteen - of water, but he knew they had none left. Sam was wiping the blood off his face, and a moment later, stroked his head.   
  
This was so wrong - he shouldn't be lying here, shouldn't be treated like a sick child, when he should've been working on those walls.  
  
"Sam - walls - let me-" he whispered.  
  
"It's all right, Daniel, you just rest."  
  
He felt his nose bleeding again, and opened his eyes again, looking for a tissue, a piece of cloth, something to wipe it with. Sam apparently realized what he was up to, since she gave him one. As he lifted it, he noticed something odd about his hand. It was speckled all over with small red spots, like needle marks, except that there hadn't been this many needles on his hands. He pulled his sleeve up, and saw that they continued up his arm.  
  
"God... What's - wrong - with me?"  
  
"Let me check and I'll try to find out."

* * *

  
Eilerson had finally gotten up, and after one look at Jackson and another at the remains of an alternate SG-1 on the floor, he'd practically run to see the walls. Mitchell had followed, staring over his shoulder, asking stupid questions, urging him to tell as soon as he knew anything about the walls. So far, it was looking pretty good. Eilerson had actually recognized three walls in a row.  
  
"Keep up the good work," Mitchell told him, and turned away to go check on Jackson.  
  
Both Teal'c and Carter were watching over him protectively once again. Teal'c's hand rested on Jackson's shoulder. Carter was peering at a thermometer, biting her lip. She noticed Mitchell approaching, stood up, and nodded towards the far end of the room.  
  
"Any news?" Mitchell asked, when they were hopefully far enough that Jackson wouldn't hear.  
  
Carter was still biting her lip. Apparently not a good sign. She waited a while, probably thinking really hard what to say.  
  
Finally, she spoke up. "Do you know anything about the Ebola virus?"  
  
That really got Mitchell off his guard. It took him a while to really understand what she had said, and then, he swore loudly.  
  
"Jeez - Damn - Carter - Sam - really! You think that's what it is?"  
  
"Well... No, not actually. As far as I know, with the disease we've got on Earth, it takes a lot more time than this for the symptoms to show up. Several days, at least. It's just that the high fever and the odd bleeding remind me awfully of the descriptions I've heard..."  
  
"So, it's, what, a faster version? Even worse? Worse than one of the most feared diseases ever?"  
  
"Cameron - I really don't know what it is, but no matter what, he can't take it for long - his fever's really high, and combine that with the dehydration-" she shook her head.  
  
"There's got to be something we can do."  
  
"I know - but I can't come up with anything. If I could just give him something to at least try to lower it - just regular pain medication might help a bit - and Compazine to do away with that awful vomiting - but we only have pills, and he can't swallow anything, not without water... I'm starting to think we should try and wake up Galen again, even if it's way too soon for him," she said.  
  
They both knew that forcing Galen to get up now, after he'd powered the Veraeda twice in too short a time, might have nasty consequences for him. On the other hand, despite the things he had done for them and the days they had spent here together, Galen was still practically a stranger, and a slightly suspicious one at that, while Jackson was a dear friend, an important team member, and one of the most valuable people in the whole Stargate Program. Of course, it was wrong, ethically, but if it came to choosing between Jackson and Galen, Mitchell certainly knew his priorities.  
  
"The last time we woke him up, it took a good while and a great deal of shouting and shaking, and all of us, himself included, freezing to death... So, let's get started, and hope it might be a bit easier this time," he decided.

* * *

  
Mitchell was shouting at Galen, trying to wake him up, but since Mitchell's voice kept growing louder, Daniel figured he wasn't getting anywhere.  
  
Daniel was freezing. It was so cold in here. And he knew it'd happen to them all. They'd all freeze to death unless they could get Galen to power the Veraeda again. It was all his fault. Of course he had never meant to touch that wall, but no matter how dizzy he'd been, he should've known better, should've stayed far enough, to prevent anything like this from happening.  
  
"Damn it, there's got to be something we can do!" Mitchell yelled, and stopped his useless shouting for a while.  
  
Someone was wrapping a blanket around him. It didn't help a whole lot. His teeth were chattering.  
  
"Are you still cold, Daniel Jackson? Shall I acquire another blanket?"  
  
Teal'c. Why wasn't Teal'c wrapping himself in blankets instead? He'd get cold too. He'd freeze as well.  
  
Daniel shook his head at Teal'c, trying to tell him to take care of himself.  
  
"Still nothing?" Max said, somewhere farther away.  
  
"Nothing whatsoever. I'd take him for dead if it weren't for the fact that he's still breathing and all that," Mitchell answered. They were talking about Galen.  
  
"That's bad. Really bad, because I'd rather not go on with the walls if he's not around to help, just in case we've got it wrong."  
  
"You've got something on the walls? A possible order?"  
  
"Almost. I recognize all except for one text, but I can't read all of them, so I can't be sure of the dates and the order..."  
  
"So, you can't do it?"  
  
"No - I... Well. No, I can't do it. I know that that text, for example, is written in cuneiform, but that's just the script, and I can't read it. I need to know the language, and something about the contents, to be able to date it. With Daniel's help, I'm pretty sure I can. At least we can get a very good guess for an order. Even if Daniel doesn't know a thing about the one single text that I can't recognize, at least we've got eleven out of twelve. The best we've ever had."  
  
"Except that Daniel's in absolutely no condition to help you, so you'll just have to do better."  
  
Right. They were speaking about Daniel as if he wasn't here at all. He was still here, he was still perfectly conscious, though just more than a bit puzzled. Why weren't the others the least bit worried about freezing to death? They didn't have the time to start figuring out wall combinations, as good as the chances might seem.  
  
"Can't you just write the texts down and show them to him?" Sam joined the conversation.  
  
"No, no - first of all, it'd take lots and lots of time to copy each of the walls exactly, and even then, I might still make mistakes. No, it won't do."  
  
Daniel got it now. He'd figured out what was going on. They weren't freezing. They were out of the freezing room already. No one else was cold, just him, because of the fever. Because of the Ancient disease. So, that was why he felt like this. One thing still hadn't changed, though - they had to get out, soon, or they would die. He had to help them get out.  
  
"No, I can - " he tried to say, but it wasn't loud enough for Max or Mitchell to hear. Teal'c, who was a lot nearer, heard perfectly well, and placed a hand on his chest to keep him down.  
  
"No, you should remain as you are."  
  
"I can - read cuneiform. Max can't."  
  
"Look, Mitchell. Cameron. We've got no other way out, and if we don't figure it out, we're all dead. I don't see any other way," Eilerson said matter-of-factly.  
  
"Yes! Let me," Daniel managed a bit louder.   
  
He heard approaching footsteps, and then the blurry forms of Sam, Mitchell and Max emerged above him.  
  
"Right. It's not like you're going to touch the walls ever again, you'll just take a quick look at them, it's not going to kill you - is it?" Mitchell asked, sounding like he tried to reassure himself. The last words weren't aimed at Daniel, but at Sam. Daniel didn't hear or see her answer.  
  
"Daniel? If you're ready... Teal'c, let's help him up."  
  
Daniel tried to help them, to get his feet under him and get on them, but it wasn't much good. Teal'c practically lifted him up, and Mitchell offered his arm too, so that he had someone supporting him on both sides.  
  
As he stood up, the darkness lurking at the edges of his vision suddenly jumped forth, and for a while, he couldn't see anything at all. And the way he felt - what he had felt when he'd been lying on the ground, what he'd thought had been awful, had been easy compared to this. He just hung in Teal'c and Mitchell's grasp and tried to keep breathing, and not to throw up again.  
  
"Daniel, you all right?" Mitchell asked, concerned.  
  
He couldn't say anything, he had to wait a moment, just a while, maybe it would get better, even if just a bit...  
  
In a moment, his vision cleared again, enough for him to see the people around him, the Veraeda, and the walls. All there was to see.  
  
"Ready," he whispered, and took a tentative step. He felt the room tilting and turning around him, but he took another step, with Teal'c and Mitchell following and supporting and actually doing most of the work. But he could do this. And he had to. The walls. The way out.

* * *

  
Mitchell didn't like this at all. Jackson should've just concentrated on staying alive, instead of having to work on these goddamn walls again, but Eilerson was right, they had no choice. Even if they could wake Galen up, which they apparently couldn't, they probably still wouldn't be able to switch rooms again without killing him. Besides, hey, this might actually be very, very good. They might get the right order and open the walls, and finally go home.  
  
Teal'c and Mitchell pretty much dragged Jackson over to the wall Eilerson had pointed to them.  
  
"That's the one I really need some help with. It's been a very long time since I've last read any kind of cuneiform writing, and I can't place this exactly. So, Daniel, if you can say anything at all..."  
  
Jackson just nodded slowly, and stared at the wall for a good long while. Mitchell waited, listening to the strained sound of his fast breathing, feeling awfully impatient.  
  
"Sumerian," Jackson finally rasped.  
  
"It's Sumerian? Good. How old? Any estimate would do."  
  
"Old. 2500."  
  
"Yes, that's very good! That means it doesn't overlap that one other text... But we'll go these through one by one, if that's OK by you?"  
  
Jackson gave another tired nod, and turned his face to the next wall. Mitchell motioned to Teal'c that they could move a few steps that way.  
  
"It's Latin-based, I can read it, but I have no idea of where it could be from," Eilerson told.  
  
Jackson had hardly looked at it for two seconds, when he started laughing. It sounded awful, completely breathless, but hopefully it was a good sign.  
  
"Mal Doran," he offered as a vague explanation.  
  
Mitchell wondered if he'd heard right, or if Jackson was just being delusional.  
  
"Mal Doran, as in, Vala Mal Doran?" he asked.  
  
Jackson nodded, but didn't say more than that, except for "Contemporary."  
  
Of course the people of a world where Vala had used to be a Goddess had called their trials Mal Doran after her. Maybe the text had to do with that. It made sense, as extremely weird as it was to run into her name in this place. If the texts really were generated totally at random, then this was some coincidence.  
  
"So, it's the same age as you, 21st century? Good. Now, as to the next one..."  
  
Jackson shook his head.  
  
"Never seen anything like it?" Eilerson sounded defeated.  
  
"No."  
  
"I think I have, actually, but I don't think I've ever heard of a name or a date for it. And it's odd that there's just seven signs there, doesn't look like much of a text. Well. That's the one wall we won't be able to date."  
  
They went on. Jackson seemed to be handling it surprisingly well, really. They had the Ancient text as always, a bit of Chinese, some Goa'uld, something that Eilerson and Jackson agreed was a really strange, futuristic form of French, and then, a text that said nothing to Jackson, but Eilerson stated it was something called the "Constitution of the Interstellar Alliance, written in Pak'ma'ra".   
  
So, they were halfway through the room, when Jackson's knees gave in, and he would've fallen down without Mitchell and Teal'c.  
  
Mitchell really thought Jackson'd better have a break. "Want to lie down for a while?" he suggested.  
  
Jackson shook his head vigorously. After a while, he got his feet back and supported at least most of his own weight again. He turned his attention to the wall.  
  
"Linear A."  
  
"Yep. Nice and clear and easy," Eilerson replied.  
  
Next one - Mitchell frowned at it. He recognized it right away. It wasn't writing, it was music, all the lines and notes and things carved into that stone slab.  
  
"And this is something I can read too, so we can just move on, and Daniel needs not bother at all, even if he could read it, which I doubt. It's the third Brandenburg concerto, third movement, by Johann Sebastian Bach," Eilerson stated.  
  
Jackson didn't protest to that one. At the next wall, he gave a slight groan. Mitchell couldn't tell if it was because of the text, or just the pain. Eilerson did seem to have an idea about that, since he answered it with,  
  
"I know. It's annoying, isn't it? But I think we can be pretty certain about it. I still think it's got to be from the future, so we put it last, and that's it. Unless that one completely unrecognizable text comes last after all... But that's to be seen."  
  
Now that Mitchell looked at the text, it did look pretty familiar. He'd seen something just like it, though he'd not spent a long time looking at it. It was one of the texts from the very first universe, the Dodecagon they had gated to. One of the texts they had never been able to date, since they hadn't gotten past the first six.  
  
Just one text left, and then they'd have gone the full round. The last text - Mitchell couldn't believe his eyes. Plain English. He could read it just as well as the next man. Not that it said much to him, though. It was a poem. He skimmed through the lines, not really reading it, until one ominous word caught his eye.  
  
 _Death closes all; but something ere the end,_  
 _Some work of noble note, may yet be done,_  
 _Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.  
  
_ "An excerpt from Ulysses, by Lord Tennyson, from the 1840's, at least in our universe," Eilerson said.  
  
"Same," Jackson agreed in a ragged exhalation - and went completely limp so suddenly that Mitchell almost let him fall. Luckily Teal'c was on his guard, and caught him. They eased him down to the ground, and Mitchell sought for a pulse. Faint and fast, but still there. And that had been the last wall.  
  
"Eilerson? Are we going home?"  
  
"We've got an exact date for all but three texts, and of those three, I've a very good guess for two. Just one wall still escapes us, and that's not likely to change. But it's just one."  
  
"Yeah. Just one. We can handle this. We're going home."

* * *

  
Two strangers had come through the large central device, but Daniel wouldn't do the first contact stuff. Mitchell could handle it. Way better than Daniel, at the moment. And where were those blankets when he really needed them? It was so cold in here. He was shivering, and dizzy even though he was perfectly still and flat on his back. He kept his eyes tightly closed.  
  
His hand was a stupid, painful, dead weight, like a block of wood, without any feel aside from the inextinguishable fire. Or rather, his hand was just one example of the pain that engulfed him completely, hands, feet, head, back and chest alike. It didn't make much sense, because he'd only brushed the wall with the tips of his fingers, but, of course, it had been an Ancient punishment for picking the wrong one, and who could tell where that would lead.  
  
Mitchell was speaking with one of the strangers, the one who hadn't fallen down unconscious. Daniel just heard the words, but couldn't grasp their meaning.  
  
"So, where do we start?"  
  
"We don't. Not until Galen comes around."  
  
"We don't know if he's ever going to come around again. He's got a better chance of coming around about anywhere else than here."  
  
"I'm not going to risk it. Neither should anyone else. Even though it's just one wall we can't date, you know what it could mean. Nerve gas, we all die. Room temperature falling, we all die. What happened to this alternate version of you could happen to us. And whatever Daniel's got right now, I'd rather not try it either."  
  
Daniel heard his name - how did this stranger know his name? But no, of course he did, Mitchell had told him. If he'd only stop hurting all over, he might be able to start thinking again.  
  
"Maybe we need to try something else, then. Ancient wall goes first, right?"  
  
"It does, but-"  
  
"Cameron, that's not going to work, we know Ancient technology is way more advanced than that-" Sam's urgent tone registered even in Daniel's hazy mind.  
  
"I'm just amazed we haven't thought of this before," Mitchell's answering voice was firm.  
  
There were steps shuffling to and fro, and then, all of a sudden, a loud crash, and another, just a bit more silent, like an echo.  
  
Daniel started at the unexpected sound. He could feel the panic getting him again, the agitation he had tried to avoid all along, because he knew that it'd not be good, not after he'd got that shock from the wall. But he couldn't help it.  
  
There was a heavy weight on his chest, a cover stone crushing him, like his parents. He could feel his heart fluttering desperately. 

* * *

  
Mitchell watched the silver plate bounce back from the wall and crash to the floor. The wall stayed dark. No lights. Either it was the wrong one, or then it just hadn't done anything. As far as he could see, there hadn't been any consequences, so either it hadn't been wrong, or then it'd just caused something that worked slowly or was hard to notice. There was only one way he could be sure.  
  
Without saying a word, hoping to avoid any useless comments from the others, Mitchell marched to the wall and put his hand on it. The text lit up instantly. It was the right one. So, tossing inanimate things at the walls to activate them obviously wouldn't do. They'd just have to touch them like they'd done before. Well, of course it couldn't be that easy.  
  
"So, Eilerson - next wall, please."  
  
"I'm not telling you, you'll just get us all killed," he answered stubbornly, turned his back to Mitchell and walked away, towards Galen.  
  
Mitchell followed, of course. They didn't have time for this.  
  
"Eilerson-"  
  
A worried call from Teal'c cut him short. "Colonel Mitchell, Daniel Jackson appears to be in distress."  
  
Instead of running to Jackson, when he knew he'd not be able to do anything to help, Mitchell continued where he'd been going in the first place, to Galen's side.  
  
Eilerson had knelt next to him, and looked up at Mitchell, giving him a faint smile.  
  
Galen had opened his eyes.  
  
Mitchell just couldn't resist the urge, so he knelt closer too, and said, "So, how's our Sleeping Beauty doing?"   
  
"Beautiful as ever, but asleep no more," Galen replied softly. It looked like he wasn't doing that bad.  
  
"I've got good news for ya. We're going out," Mitchell told him.  
  
"Cameron? Is he awake? Galen? Daniel could use some help," Carter yelled from Jackson's side.  
  
"You up to doing some more miracles, Beauty?"  
  
Galen closed his eyes, took a few deep breaths, and sat up.  
  
"Help me up. I'll see what I can do."  
  
Both Eilerson and Mitchell offered their arms, and Galen accepted all their aid. When he was on his feet, he shrugged them off. For a while, he just stood there, hanging his head.  
  
"Everything all right?" Eilerson asked, sounding sincerely concerned.  
  
"In time, everything will be. Until then, we'll have to do with what we have."  
  
He walked over to Jackson, stopping only for a short glance at the remains of the alternate SG-1 on the floor.   
  
When he got to Jackson's side, he placed one hand on Jackson's chest and took out the crystal he'd held before - a healing device of some sort, Mitchell figured, since it'd showed up every time he was healing someone.  
  
Mitchell had only been away from Jackson for some minutes, but he was looking a lot worse now. It probably had to do with the trickle of blood making its way out of the corner of his mouth, joining the one flowing from his nose. His breathing came in short, rapid gasps. As Galen held his hands in place, it slowly began to even out and slow down.  
  
Mitchell thought it looked like Galen was really getting somewhere, that Jackson was starting to look a bit better off. Still, Galen shook his head as he withdrew his hands.   
  
"Daniel?" Galen asked softly.  
  
Jackson's eyes opened just a little. They were so bloodshot they looked more red than blue. He peered at Galen and asked, "Who're you?"  
  
"Galen."  
  
He frowned slightly and closed his eyes again. Both Eilerson and Galen were staring at Mitchell as if they had something important to say, but didn't want to say it here. Mitchell sighed, stood up and walked away from Jackson again. The two others followed.  
  
"So. Speak."  
  
"We must get out soon. I can't heal him."  
  
"He's looking better to me," Mitchell frowned.  
  
"It won't last. All I can do is a few tricks that offer a moment's relief. They won't last, and soon he'll be too sick for me to do anything at all. I believe it's a viral hemorrhagic fever of some sort, but to prove that, I'd need a blood sample and the proper equipment to study it. I'm not sure I could come up with a cure even then."  
  
"So, are we all going to have it?" Eilerson was obviously mostly concerned for himself.  
  
"I can't tell. The way we've all been in close proximity to him, most of all, to his blood, which might be highly contagious, suggests that it's more than likely."  
  
"Anyway, what I had to say was, I need to go through my idea of a wall sequence with Daniel, and then we can try it. Though that one wall's a wild card. It could go anywhere," Eilerson gestured towards the unknown wall with the seven symbols.  
  
Galen's eyebrows had climbed an inch higher at the sight of it. He took a few steps towards the wall and said, "I know this."  
  
Eilerson looked like he was about to jump and hug Galen. "Really - you do? Honestly?"  
  
"It's the Code I have been following for most of my life."  
  
"What code - what's it-" the foreboding expression on Galen's face stopped Eilerson's questions short. "Uh, never mind. Can you tell how old it is?"  
  
"It was set down a thousand years ago."  
  
"A thousand years before our time? As in, 1200 CE?"  
  
Galen nodded.  
  
"Then we've got it! We've got an exact order, and it's not a guess anymore!"  
  
"You've got to double-check with Daniel before we take a shot at it?" Mitchell asked.  
  
"I think I'd better. Just in case."  
  
So, back to Jackson's side it was, then. Mitchell did agree with Eilerson. It was better to have two people thinking this over, rather than just one. They'd all learned their lesson about what the cost of one single mistake could be. And he did trust Jackson a lot more than Eilerson, no matter how sick and feverish he was.  
  
"Daniel, you with me here? We've got the walls figured out, right? Ancient first, then Sumerian?"  
  
"Sumerian... Not Egyptian?"  
  
"No, there's no Egyptian in this room. That was the first room, Daniel. This is the fifth. The one where we get out. Ancient, Sumerian, Linear A, how's that?"  
  
Daniel gave a little cough, and answered, "Right. Yes."  
  
"Then, Galen recognized the one we didn't know as some techno-mage thing that's from the 13th century. So that would be next. And then the Bach piece."  
  
"No, no," Daniel muttered. "Chinese."  
  
"Chinese... You think that particular text is that old? You sure about that?"  
  
A silence, a few rattling breaths, and a nod.  
  
"You're probably right... And if you are, you saved us from at least one mistake with that. So, Chinese is fifth, then Bach. How old do you think the goa'uld text is?"  
  
"Not."  
  
"Not old? But it's older than the Mal Doran text?"  
  
Another nod, another small cough, and another stream of blood running down Daniel's chin.

* * *

  
Daniel knew what was going on. He knew he shouldn't tell anything. It was just the Replicator-Sam trying to get to the Ancient knowledge stored somewhere in his mind. She was using some truly strange methods to get there. And he couldn't resist it. Somehow, he thought he had to answer. That it was the right thing to do, even though it wasn't. The paradox was tearing his mind apart, just like the pain was shattering his body.  
  
"Tennyson, Goa'uld, Mal Doran... Then the ISA declaration, though you would know as little about that as I do about Goa'uld."  
  
Daniel didn't know what to say. He wasn't really sure what this apparition, this hallucination, was talking about. He remembered the texts, he remembered they must be put in the right order, but he couldn't recall why, or what that had to do with the knowledge of the Ancients. So, he just nodded.  
  
"And we'll finish with the post-French, and then that unrecognizable text from the first room."  
  
First room. The white glow from the ceiling. The Dodecagon. Something that he should know, something important, but he just couldn't remember.  
  
He was back in the small room on the replicator ship, with Sam standing in front of him. Except that it wasn't Sam, not really, just a human-form replicator made to look like her. And before Daniel could do anything - as if there was anything he could do - her hand morphed into a sword, and she struck him, running it right through his chest.  
  
With all the hurt he was already suffering, that one stab didn't feel as bad as he'd have expected. But he could feel its effects, he felt the blood filling his chest, flowing out of the corner of his mouth. He couldn't breathe. He was going to die. Unless he could ascend again. But where was Oma?

* * *

  
"That's it? You've got it?" Mitchell asked anxiously.   
  
He had the feeling that Jackson hadn't really been following what Eilerson tried to suggest. It looked like he was pretty much out of it again. When Galen had said that his help wouldn't last long, Mitchell had figured he'd meant something like an hour. It had hardly been fifteen minutes yet, and Jackson's breathing had picked up a horribly wet-sounding undertone.  
  
"I've got something. Can't say if it's 'it' before we've tried it."  
  
"So, we stop wasting time and try it."  
  
"Who's going to..." Eilerson began.  
  
"I don't care. Don't give a damn. Anyone. Whoever. Except for you, Galen. I need you to keep Jackson alive until we've got the walls. So, I'll do it on my own, if no one else volunteers."  
  
"We shall all volunteer," Teal'c said, and if Mitchell could interpret his voice at all, it sounded a bit offended.   
  
Of course they would all volunteer. Mitchell just felt so tired and annoyed that he couldn't help saying things he didn't mean. And he still had the grandma of all headaches, with a really bad attitude. He figured that if they wouldn't get out really soon, he might just go totally stir-crazy.  
  
Galen had taken up his healing crystal again, hopefully trying to do whatever he could to help. Mitchell laid a hand on Jackson's shoulder and gave it a slight squeeze.  
  
"Just hang on in there, Daniel," he said.  
  
The answer he got was more than a bit startling, and not only because the voice uttering it was so weak.  
  
"...Jack?"  
  
"Sorry. He's not here right now. But we'll get there soon," Mitchell promised, and stood up. "So, which way to the second wall?"  
  
The first wall was still glowing, so they knew at least that one was right. Mitchell remembered that the second wall was supposed to be in cuneiform writing, and he thought he could recognize it, but he couldn't be sure, and they couldn't afford any mistakes.  
  
Eilerson didn't answer. Instead, he just walked to the cuneiform wall and hit it himself. It was correct.  
  
"Linear A's next. Teal'c, it's right behind you," he told.  
  
Teal'c turned around and touched the wall, which lit up as well.

* * *

  
Jack wasn't here. That thought, somehow, was enough to drag Daniel's wandering mind back into the present. That, combined to the fact that, for some odd reason, he was feeling slightly better again. No longer suffocating.  
  
He was not on the Replicator ship. He was in the Dodecagon. He was really, really sick, with an Ancient disease. And Oma wasn't here. Though she'd had been there when he'd almost, no, when he had actually died on that ship, she hadn't been there when Daniel had escaped death so narrowly in the Dodecagon in their own universe, after he'd first touched a wall.  
  
Maybe the containment in this place was so extremely effective that not even the Ascended could make their way into it. After all, higher plane or not, they were some kind of energy beings, and this room was built to keep energies tightly within, so nothing could go out, and nothing could get in. But no, that was all beside the point. Oma had fought Anubis. And the Ascended had probably decided that Daniel was a hopeless case who would never ever be able to conform to their rules and regulations. He didn't know what had happened to Oma, but he was sure they'd never allow her to contact him again.  
  
Could he ascend on his own now? He had already been up and away over there once, and he'd come very near to it again after that encounter with Replicator-Sam. But even if he could ascend here, would he only become stuck, unable to get out through the containment? Would he be caught inside these walls until the end of time? The four days he'd been here so far had already felt like an eternity.  
  
Of course, they might just figure the way out, and he'd survive. He didn't know what was going on with the walls at the moment. Max had been asking him questions, he remembered that, offering a possible order, and he'd approved most of it. But it was silent now, no one speaking anything at all, at least not loud enough for Daniel to hear. No cheering to tell that they'd got things right, and nothing to suggest that they hadn't, either.  
  
If he could just open his eyes and look, but he couldn't. Wouldn't. He knew it would be a very bad idea. He also knew that this moment of clear thought, feeling slightly less dead, was passing quickly. It was an oasis that he'd already left behind, and now he was walking into the desert again, thirsty, without any water anywhere in sight, hurting all over, leaving a trail of blood behind him, so weary that he could hardly lift his feet from the ground.  
  
The others might just figure the way out of here so that Daniel could die somewhere else.

* * *

  
They'd got six in a row. They were halfway through the walls, and they'd got each one right so far. They'd fallen completely silent. They were too tense to say anything at all, too worried that the next wall might be the one to go wrong. Eilerson went to touch the seventh wall himself. The English one. It glowed reassuringly.  
  
Mitchell knew, or at least thought he'd heard, that the Goa'uld text would come next, so he started walking towards it, but Carter was there already. Eilerson nodded to her, and she and went for it. Right. It was right, too.  
  
This was looking almost too good to be true. Could they really have the right order at the first try? There was always the next wall to go, always the chance that it'd wipe them all out of existence with some unknown and all-powerful Ancient weapon.  
  
The text from Vala's planet came next, and Teal'c did that one. Successfully.  
  
Eilerson got the alien language declaration from his universe.  
  
Ten. They'd arranged all but two correctly. Those last two had been the haziest ones anyway, the texts from the future. And now that they had only those two left, it was just a fifty-fifty thing, and if this first try went wrong, then they'd do it again the other way, and it'd have to be right.  
  
Mitchell was already starting to plan ahead in his mind, think about what they'd do when they got to those other rooms. How they'd get home. Not that he cared a whole lot about what all the other rooms had in them. All he needed was the stargate room. If there was an SG-1 in this universe, dead as they might be, it suggested that there'd be an SGC as well. Maybe they could just dial home, talk things over with them and go on wondering about what to do with the SGC crew of this universe. At least they'd be out of this awful place, and they'd get some real medical attention for Jackson. And some water.  
  
Out of the two walls that were left, one was the odd futuristic French, and the other, that text already familiar from the first universe. Jackson and Eilerson had figured that the French came first. Mitchell was nearest to it. He turned to the wall, reached out a shaky hand, and touched it.  
  
The relief when he saw the light shining through those curly symbols carved in stone was just overwhelming. His legs felt like jell-o. He had to place both hands on the wall just to keep himself steady.  
  
Unceremoniously, but with a smug smile unlike anything Mitchell had seen on his face so far, Eilerson walked to the one single wall that wasn't glowing yet, and punched it.  
  
The walls had come down with what had looked like surprising speed. Now it seemed to take ages for them to open. The lights went off from all walls at the same time, and the writing disappeared with a grinding sound about as bad as fingernails on a chalkboard.  
  
The heavy stone slabs began to rise, so slowly at first that Mitchell wasn't sure if he was just imagining that little crack between the floor and the lower ends of the wall-doors. But they were going up, sluggishly but certainly, revealing the twelve rooms beyond.  
  
Soon, Mitchell found himself staring straight at the stargate.  
  
They'd got it right. No one was going to die in this place.  
  
There was no need to be silent anymore.  
  
Unable to find the exact words to nail what he felt, Mitchell just let out a victorious howl.  
  
He saw Carter and Teal'c hug each other briefly, and Eilerson was still smiling, the expression seeming oddly out of place on his face. Galen had stood up from Jackson's side, staring curiously at the twelve doorways.  
  
Mitchell wondered if Jackson had got what'd happened, and walked over to tell him. Carter and Teal'c knelt next to him too.  
  
"We have great news," Teal'c started.  
  
"Daniel, we've got it - you and Max got it! You got it right, and the doors are open," Carter said.  
  
"Yeah, we're finally free, and everything's going to be fine," Mitchell added.  
  
If Jackson heard it at all, he did a very good job hiding that. His eyes stayed shut, his bloodstained mouth hung loosely open. A teardrop was drawing a crimson line downwards from the corner of his eye.  
  
"So, we've got the walls. What's next? Where do we go from here?" Eilerson's smile didn't really reach the tone of his voice.  
  
"Next, we'll call home. Or the closest thing to our home in this universe, anyway," Mitchell declared. "Carter, how'd you like dialing Earth?"  
  
The joyful look on Carter's face had already faded a bit when she'd looked at Jackson, and now it fell a bit more, hinting that she wasn't exactly sure whether dialing an alternate SGC was a good idea. Still, she didn't say a thing. She walked through the open doorway to the DHD and started punching the symbols.  
  
The seven gate chevrons lit in their familiar sequence, and Carter hit the central orb.  
  
Accompanied by a disheartening, descending hum, the chevrons faded out.  
  
She tried it again, but with the same results.  
  
It seemed they weren't calling home after all.

* * *

  
Daniel was dying.  
  
There was nothing anyone could do to prevent it. The amount of radiation he'd been exposed to was lethal. He knew Janet had done all she could, and that Jack, Sam and Teal'c had tried contacting all possible allies, searching for any healing technology, anything. They had come back empty-handed. Even Sam's attempt with the Goa'uld healing device had failed.  
  
He did not blame them. Of course he did not want to die, but it had been his choice, and he accepted it. He'd die knowing he had done the right thing. His life in exchange for the lives of all the people on Kelowna. If he hadn't stepped in and stopped that device before it went off, they would all be dead now.  
  
In a way, he thought Jack and Teal'c and Sam had more trouble dealing with this than he did. They were both angry at him for doing what he'd done, and grief-stricken by what would happen to him. He could offer them no relief. Even if he could find the right words, he was far past the point of being able to speak.  
  
He was sick and tired beyond anything he had ever experienced in his life. All he hoped was that he could just fall asleep or unconscious and stop feeling it all, and still, he fought hard not to let that happen. He didn't want to waste his last moments unfeeling and oblivious to the world. Though he wasn't much more than that right now, he could still hear the voices speaking, knew there were people around him, his team, his friends, those who cared about him. The people who would be there until the end.

* * *

  
Carter turned her back to the DHD to face the others.  
  
"As much as I hate being a killjoy, I'm really not so surprised that the gate doesn't work. I mean, even though we've got the remains of an alternate SG-1 on the floor in this room, it doesn't mean anything. Daniel explained earlier that the Veraeda can send people back or forth in time, so we might be a thousand years away from our own time. We might not even be anywhere near to our own universe. Since our General O'Neill has the Ancient gene, maybe this one here had it as well, and was able to activate the Veraeda, and this is not their universe at all..."  
  
"But there's got to be a way out of here, no matter whatever time and universe we're in," Mitchell said.  
  
"Whatever that way is, we need to find it right now, or it'll be too late," Galen muttered, his words far less clearly and carefully formed than usual. He had walked to the nearest table, and now he was leaning on it with both hands, his head bowed.  
  
Mitchell didn't like that. It looked like Galen was about to give up on Jackson. "Galen?" he asked.  
  
"I've done all I can, but it's not enough. I can't fight it, it's far too complicated, too overwhelming - his blood vessels are leaking all around, his liver and kidneys are about to fail, his blood pressure is too low and soon he'll go into shock, and there's no way I can stop it all - it's beyond the abilities of any of my kind... What he really needs is transfusions, lots of them, and fluids, which I cannot just create out of thin air," he shook his head, and went on with a wavering voice. "And so, I fail once again - I fail to save a life when it really matters, just like every other time, except for Matthew..."  
  
Galen had his own personal demons like everyone else, it seemed. And whatever he actually was, human or cyborg, someone with a huge bunch of spare technology in his body or an ordinary man, it seemed that the dehydration, the imprisonment and the hopelessness of their situation were getting to him as well. Not to mention the possible aftereffects of powering up the Veraeda.  
  
"But he's not dead yet, and I've no intention of letting him die, either," Mitchell declared. "So, we'll start searching the rooms-"  
  
"The ship!" Carter suddenly exclaimed, out of nowhere.  
  
"Ship? What ship?" Mitchell had no idea what she was talking about.  
  
She pointed at something behind him, and he turned around to look. There, in one of the rooms, waited the Ancient gateship.  
  
"That ship. The gateship. If we can't use the gate, at least we can try to fly, well, somewhere. Anywhere, away from the Dodecagon, maybe to a world where we'll find some help..." she explained. Just flying out into deep space in an unknown universe didn't sound like much of a great plan, but at least it was something. Possibly better than a broken gate.  
  
"Or perhaps, if it has a time-travel device, and we are not in our time, we can use it to return to that time in this universe, and then dial Earth," Teal'c suggested. Mitchell figured that sounded really good.  
  
"Let's go and take a look. But I want someone to stay with Jackson." Mitchell needed someone to make sure that he really stayed alive long enough for them to find the way out.  
  
"Keep in mind that, although none of us have started showing any symptoms of this disease so far, if the virus is contagious, anyone doing rescue breathing will certainly become infected. As for chest compressions, any bruising they could cause, let alone broken ribs, would probably lead to serious internal bleeding," Galen warned, still not sounding hopeful.  
  
"I shall watch over him," Teal'c answered resolutely. "My knowledge of the gate vessels is not extensive."  
  
Mitchell didn't know a lot about them either, he thought, as he walked into the room that was pretty much filled by the ship. Carter, Galen and Eilerson followed him. Carter hit some controls at the end of the ship, and a ramp opened to let them in.  
  
Mitchell had only read about a ship like this in the mission files concerning a planet where Harry Maybourne had been king. SG-1, officially lead by Carter, but accompanied by General O'Neill, had found an Ancient ship on that planet, and it had had what'd seemed like a time travel device in it. That ship was in Area 51 right now, in their universe, and they still didn't understand a whole lot about how it worked. It was designed to fit through the stargate, and even had a DHD built inside it.  
  
"This is... This looks different. There are things in here that weren't there in the ship we found," Carter said as soon as they were in. So, this was new to her as well.   
  
The inside of the ship felt and looked crammed. The walls were covered with complex clusters of Ancient technology, and several large devices of some sort stood up from the floor as well, or maybe they were just the different parts of one big device.  
  
"So, you think this can do time travel?" Mitchell asked.  
  
"I don't know what it can do, really, but at least it's probably able to do more than just fly through the gate. Though if some of this technology adds up to a time travel device, then it's completely different in design than the one we've seen."  
  
"The really important question is, can we fly it at all."   
  
Mitchell walked through all the contraptions to the cockpit of the vessel. It didn't look as crammed as the rest of the ship. Instead, it had four seats and a strange set of controls, just like what O'Neill had explained in his mission report.  
  
Mitchell sat down on the seat at the controls and put his palms on the pads. Nothing happened, of course.   
  
"Just one little problem. We've got no one with the Ancient gene around."  
  
Galen had appeared at his side. "Perhaps I could try," he offered, and Mitchell let him. He'd done pretty good with the Veraeda, so maybe he could deal with a gateship as well.  
  
Galen placed his hands on the controls. Still nothing. "I can interface with the surface of it, but it won't grant further access without a certain DNA sequence," he noted.  
  
"Yeah - as I said, the Ancient gene, which we don't have, but Jack O'Neill-" Mitchell got an idea as he was speaking. O'Neill. They needed O'Neill's DNA.  
  
He walked out of the ship, back to that twelve-sided room where they'd spent so much time. Teal'c looked up from Jackson's side and nodded to him. Still alive.  
  
Mitchell went straight to the skeletal remains with the O'Neill -dog tags. Feeling like a grave robber, he picked up a few finger bones.  
  
When he returned to the cockpit with them, Carter cast an appalled look at him.  
  
"If it helps us out, I don't think O'Neill would've had a problem with it," he shrugged, and offered them to Galen. "O'Neill's bones. O'Neill's DNA. Ancient gene. Anything you can do?"  
  
Galen picked up the bones, placed one on each control pad, and laid his hands on them. He closed his eyes in concentration.  
  
It occurred to Mitchell that the combination of gateship and Galen might be just as bad as Galen and the Veraeda had been. He was half-expecting that Galen'd fall unconscious and topple off the chair.  
  
Instead, Galen opened his eyes, wide with wonder, his entire expression lit up with awe.  
  
"This ship is amazing," he said, sounding slightly breathless. "Incredible."  
  
"And, believe me, if Galen says that, it's really something, considering that his own ship is easily the most advanced spacecraft I've ever seen," Eilerson added.  
  
It really didn't matter however fine and fancy the ship was. Mitchell was only interested in one thing. "So, can you get us out?"  
  
"More than that. Much more than that, I think," Galen replied. "Get everyone and everything in."  
  
He stayed in his place, hands on the controls, his gaze wandering, looking at things no one else could see. Everyone else rushed out, to grab the most important of their belongings. Packs and guns were in, blankets and sleeping bags could just stay where they were, in a pile in front of the Veraeda. They'd give a soft landing to the next people to come through it.  
  
"What about..." Carter asked, motioning vaguely at the alternate SG-1. Mitchell shook his head. They wouldn't waste time on those who were already dead.  
  
As for those who were hopefully not dead yet, Teal'c had already lifted Jackson from the floor, and carried him all the way to the gateship.  
  
When they were all in, Eilerson and Carter in the cockpit with Galen, and Teal'c, Mitchell and a barely breathing Jackson among the odd bits and parts of Ancient technology, Teal'c reached for the ramp controls. Before he'd touched anything, the ramp closed on its own.  
  
"All in? Fasten your seatbelts and hang on to your hats. It's going to be the ride of a lifetime. More than one lifetime, actually," Galen called out from the controls. "Oh, and enjoy the view."  
  
Huge windows unfolded in the walls on both sides. Or maybe, more likely, they were just screens showing the outside, which looked like windows. All Mitchell could see through them were the dark stone walls of the surrounding room.  
  
The walls started to move, to slide downwards. In a second, he realized the walls weren't moving at all. The gateship was rising slowly, but its inertial dampers, or whatever they were called, prevented them from feeling it.  
  
Mitchell remembered perfectly well that the rooms weren't particularly high. "Galen, are you nuts? We're going to hit the ceiling!" he shouted.  
  
But they went on rising, and they didn't hit a thing. There was a break in the walls, a long, thin dark line, some more wall, and then, complete darkness, sprinkled with a few dim stars, far away.  
  
The ship tilted slightly, or then Galen had turned the displays, the outside cameras, or whatever, to show a different angle. They showed an odd, dark-gray formation, like a star with a lot of deformed rays. Mitchell couldn't see all of them, but he knew there were twelve. The outside of the Dodecagon. It was covered all over with patches of Ancient technology, just like the inside of the ship around them.  
  
They were flying above it, across it. The image changed again, to show the ray they'd left behind. Its surface had split along the middle and opened up like a pair of triangular doors when they'd come out. Now, it was closing slowly behind them.

* * *

  
It was all too much. It hurt too much. Staying awake was too hard. He couldn't do it, not anymore.  
  
He could hardly hear the voices around him, couldn't recognize any of the speakers or make up any words, Jack, Sam, Teal'c, Janet, Hammond, whoever, it was all a buzz that meant nothing to him.  
  
He had always thought he was a fighter. Only because of that he had managed to escape death so many times in the past.  
  
This time was different. He knew there was nothing anyone could do to help, nothing that could stop the inevitable from happening.  
  
Daniel could just as well give up.

* * *

  
A weak voice, a barely perceptible word from Jackson, took Mitchell's attention immediately away from the view.  
  
He couldn't decide what Jackson had said. Could've been a lot of things, like "hurts" or "help" or "hell", or then something in a language Mitchell didn't even know.  
  
Mitchell crouched closer, so he could hear anything that might follow. But there was nothing more. Nothing at all. Jackson had stopped breathing.  
  
"Damn! Not now! Jackson? Jackson! Daniel!" Mitchell shouted, shaking him vigorously. He got no response.  
  
Teal'c, sitting at Jackson's feet, gazed at him intently. Mitchell tilted Jackson's head back, trying to secure his airway, but it didn't change a thing either.  
  
"Galen! We're really not doing good here!"  
  
"What's wrong - he's not-" Carter's concerned words came before Galen had said a thing.   
  
He interrupted her. "No, Samantha. Stay where you are. I need you here," Galen spoke with a lower tone, and then switched to shouting when he addressed Mitchell. "Whatever I said earlier, forget about it! We're only minutes away. I can't leave the controls. Just do whatever it takes to keep him alive."  
  
"Minutes away from where?" Mitchell asked, completely puzzled. He could only hope that Galen knew what he was doing.  
  
He was nearer to Jackson. He had to do the rescue breathing. The disease could just go to hell. If he was going to get it, he was sure he had it already. He pinched Jackson's nose shut and gave him two breaths. Didn't do any good as far as he could see. He could taste Jackson's blood on his lips. He checked for a pulse, and felt nothing.  
  
Teal'c had squeezed himself to the very narrow space between the Ancient machinery and Jackson's other side. He had placed a hand on Jackson's chest, and let his head droop sadly. Not good. Definitely not good.  
  
"Whatever it takes, Galen said. T, never mind the bruises or the broken bones," Mitchell told him, so Teal'c positioned himself so he could start compressions. Mitchell knew he could do it well enough, had seen him do it before.  
  
Fifteen compressions. Two breaths.  
  
Galen had said they were minutes away. Mitchell couldn't imagine where he was taking them. No matter what the ship could do, crossing any distance across space in just minutes, without the stargate, sounded absurd. Especially since the Dodecagon was so far from everything else, all alone in deep space.  
  
Just on cue with Mitchell's thoughts, Galen yelled, "Brace yourselves! Here we go."  
  
Then, the world stopped, turned upside down, collapsed into itself and exploded back to its normal state again. It felt like the Big Bang, the effects of the Veraeda and those of a gate trip fused together and fit into a moment so short that it couldn't be measured.  
  
It hadn't changed one thing, though. Jackson still showed no signs of life.  
  
"What was that? What happened?" Mitchell heard Eilerson's voice from the cockpit.  
  
"I can't think of a proper word for it," Galen's answer was vague. "A leap. A trip. A transition."  
  
Teal'c had finished another fifteen compressions, completely uninterrupted by that immeasurable moment when the world had done a reverse somersault with twists.  
  
Mitchell gave another two breaths.  
  
Waiting for his turn again, he happened to glance at the screen on the wall. It showed another ray of the Dodecagon, or maybe the same one they'd come from. Its doors were opening slowly. What the hell was Galen up to?  
  
"Samantha, it's your turn now. I need you to activate the stargate."  
  
"Where to?"  
  
"I don't know. You tell me. It's your universe, after all."  
  
Though Mitchell still felt no heartbeat from Jackson, he could feel his own heart soar at those words. He didn't know how it was possible, he could hardly believe it. Of course, it might not be. Maybe they were just in a universe close to theirs. How could Galen be sure, anyway? How could any of them be sure? They'd have to spend a while in this universe, take a good look at everything and everyone at the SGC, before they could be sure. But if it really was...  
  
Two breaths. No response.  
  
He looked up at the outside again. Either they were now facing the gate room with the ship tilted into a really odd position, or then Galen had switched the view so they saw what was directly below them. The stargate, its ring turning, the chevrons lighting up much faster than on the Earth gate, and then the blue flash of the vortex. Mitchell had never, ever thought it could look this wonderful.  
  
"Sam, you got the GDO?" he just had to check.  
  
"Of course I do!" came her exasperated answer.  
  
A voice distorted by static hissing came through their radios. "SG-1, this is Stargate Control. What's your status? Everything all right?"  
  
"No, everything's not all right! We're coming through. Stand clear from the gate. No, wait - isolate the whole room and get a medical team in hazmat gear," Mitchell yelled to his radio.  
  
The gateship of the Duodecim landed smoothly in front of the gate. There was just enough space for it in the narrow room.  
  
"So, what're we waiting for? Let's go home!" Mitchell exclaimed.  
  
The ship plunged into the shimmering, rippling blue of the event horizon.

* * *

  
**Day Five - SGC**  
  
They were home. Or at least very near to home. The gate room that Mitchell saw through the screens was exactly like it should be. And empty, except for a bunch of people in those protective suits that looked like something out of an old scifi-show.  
  
Their landing was as soft and unnoticeable as any movement of this amazing ship. As soon as they were down, the ramp at the back started to open. And as soon as it was low enough, before Mitchell had even managed to really wrap his mind around the idea that they might really, truly have made it back, Teal'c had grabbed Jackson and started making his way out of the ship. But something wasn't quite right.  
  
Teal'c's steps were really slow and wavering, as if Jackson was way too heavy for him to carry. It hadn't looked that difficult before. Mitchell couldn't know how long it'd been since Teal'c had used the last of his tretonin. He was probably sick too. He hadn't said anything about it. Damn his always solid, steady and stoical appearance.  
  
Mitchell jumped up and ran after him, ready to offer his help. But he found out that his steps weren't too light either. He was exhausted after the long struggle to get out, the days spent without water, the CPR they'd been doing, and who knew what else.  
  
He got there just in time when Teal'c's knees gave in and he pitched towards the floor.   
  
Mitchell tried to catch Teal'c, or Jackson, for that matter, to stop them from hitting the ground. Instead, he found himself crashing down as well. They all landed in a heap at the bottom of the ramp.  
  
Mitchell wanted to get up and tell Lam to take care of Jackson and Teal'c first. Jackson, most of all. He might be gone already, beyond any help. Even if he wasn't, he certainly didn't have a lot of time left. But Mitchell was so tired he could hardly keep his eyes open.  
  
When he actually saw Carolyn's face through that transparent face-plate of her suit, looking just like herself, working furiously, doing her best to help them, he allowed his leaden eyelids to close. He fell asleep right away.

* * *

  
Daniel was still hurting all over.   
  
That could only mean one thing. He was still alive. Against all probability, against all reason, he wasn't dead. He couldn't understand how that was possible. He didn't feel much better, the pain was every bit as bad as before, he was dying, drowning, about to lose this battle. But breathing was easier, and the pain somehow less sharp than before, just as bad, but different.  
  
The surroundings felt different as well. He'd thought he had been in the infirmary all the time, but he hadn't been aware of its scents, its sounds, its particular atmosphere. Now he could sense it all around him.  
  
Something had changed, something had happened, but he couldn't understand how, or why. He needed to know. He fought to open his eyes.  
  
The ceiling was white, but it wasn't glowing. That meant something. He didn't know what. It was supposed to be important.  
  
"Hey - Daniel! Welcome back!" Jack uttered. Not in a happy welcoming tone, but in that wary one Daniel had been hearing all along, the one people used when speaking to the mortally ill.  
  
Back from where? Right, Daniel could guess. He had almost died, and they'd managed to save him. Why, he couldn't figure out. Why go on when they knew he'd go anyway, soon? Too much radiation. Nothing could prevent it. He had to tell that to Jack. Tell him not to get his hopes up.  
  
"Jack... No way - radiation-" he could hardly hear his own voice.  
  
A blur that had to be Jack swam into his field of vision. But something was off about it. It didn't look like a normal face. It was covered and framed with something - a hazmat suit. He had thought he wouldn't cause a risk of contamination anymore.  
  
"God, Danny - is that where you are? What you think is going on?" Jack sounded appalled. "It's not radiation, Daniel. That was years ago. Forget about that. It's a virus. They're going to figure it out. Just hang on in there. Just a while longer."  
  
Years ago... Jack was telling him he wasn't dying of radiation sickness. He was dying of a virus... If he was dying at all. But he was. He could feel it. It was just like that time years ago. The pain was every bit as bad, the feeling that his body was falling apart completely, failing utterly.  
  
"Wha..." he asked. What had happened. What was going on.  
  
"You were trapped, but you got out. Thanks to you. And a few others. And everything's gonna be fine."  
  
Trapped. White glow from the ceiling. The Dodecagon. It was hazy, but it was coming back.  
  
He didn't remember getting out of there. Anything that had happened after they'd gotten out of the freezing room was vague and overlapped with other, more distant memories.  
  
How could they have gotten out? And back to their own universe? Unless... This wasn't their own universe at all, but an alternate one - he needed to know! And what of everyone else? Teal'c and Sam and Mitchell? And the two visitors from the future, Galen and Max. Were they here? Were they all alive? All right? Had they got the virus as well?  
  
Once he got started, the questions wouldn't stop, but he couldn't force his cracked lips and raw throat to spell them out loud. It was driving him crazy. The annoying, familiar beep of the ECG monitor was getting faster in time with his painfully racing heart.  
  
"Doc! Lam! Hey!" Jack shouted.  
  
She was there in an instant, another figure dressed in protective gear. "What's going on?"  
  
"Daniel?" Jack asked, crouched closer to him, but he still couldn't speak.  
  
The room had started spinning dizzyingly fast. He closed his eyes  
  
They were really out of the Dodecagon, weren't they? But if all his previous memories and thoughts had been delusional... He knew he was feverish. What if this was just a dream? What if none of this was really happening? They could still be trapped within those twelve walls.  
  
"He was awake, but..."  
  
"I'm truly sorry, General... I can't have him worked up like this. He can't take it. I'll have to sedate him."  
  
"But... He... You..." Jack was stuttering. Jack never stuttered like that. Was he an alternate Jack? Maybe he wasn't Jack at all, just someone else that Daniel took for Jack? He hadn't see his face properly, but the voice sounded right.   
  
Jack, or whoever he was, managed to finish what he'd been trying to say. "If you do that... You don't know if he'll wake up again, ever, do you?"  
  
Daniel knew Jack really hadn't wanted to say that. He also knew that Jack was right.  
  
Even if it wasn't radiation, it could still kill him. The needles. The Ancient virus. The thing they'd not been sure he'd got, at first, but which had quickly become horribly obvious. Galen hadn't been able to heal it.  
  
Lam didn't answer to Jack.  
  
Someone was wrapping Daniel in blankets from the inside out. Not thermal blankets, but soft cotton ones, flowing through him, muffling his confused mind, enveloping his aching chest. It felt good.  
  
The last thing he heard was Jack's voice.  
  
"Daniel. This time, you're not going anywhere. And that's an order."

* * *

  
Mitchell woke up in the infirmary, or at least some very familiar-looking version of it. He wasn't doing too bad, he figured, from the general lack of tubes and wires around him. Just one needle and tube in his arm, leading to a bag with clear liquid in it. No blood. Could it be that he'd missed the disease after all? The disease - Jackson!  
  
Mitchell lifted his head slightly and looked around. He found a person he'd not have expected to see sitting right next to his bed, studying a thick stack of papers.  
  
"Eilerson?"  
  
"Hm?" he answered absently, still staring at whatever he was reading.  
  
"This the best spot for reading you could find around here?"  
  
Eilerson dropped the papers on his lap and shifted his gaze to Mitchell, looking mildly surprised. "Oh, you're awake."  
  
"Yeah, so they tell me. Did we make it? Is everyone all right?"  
  
"Everyone's alive, more or less. Teal'c's doing better, but he's still under close surveillance. Galen and Carter are working with this Doctor Lam of yours, trying to come up with something to help Daniel."  
  
"So, he's..."  
  
"He's not dead, but not much better than that either. No one's being very optimistic."  
  
"And why aren't we all in isolation?"  
  
"Because the first, and so far only, useful bit of information our good scientists have got is that the virus isn't contagious. It's somehow locked to Daniel's DNA. Won't touch anyone else."  
  
"That doesn't make any sense."  
  
"Actually, if you'd just think about it for a while before speaking, it really does. Even though the wall punishments were awful, they were all limited to that place. They wouldn't spread any further from there. If the people trapped inside a freezing cold room managed to open the walls and run, they'd just leave it all behind, without any further damage. With a contagious disease, it'd be different. If they got out and away while carrying it, they might spread it anywhere outside the Dodecagon. The Duodecim wouldn't want that to happen."  
  
"...right." Too much information, Mitchell thought. "So, why're you here, instead of, well, anywhere else?"  
  
"I thought you'd come around rather sooner than later and then you'd want to know what's going on."  
  
"Really? Just thinking about what I'd want? Anyway, they can't just let you run around the base freely, can they?"  
  
"They don't," Eilerson waved towards the door further away, with two guards framing it. "I can go to several places, but my silent friends will follow. I'm surprised they let me walk around at all, after all the general suspicion Galen's been gathering around him."  
  
"Huh?"  
  
"Well, Lam wanted to have us all checked, which of course made sense when she'd heard a bit about everything that happened in the Dodecagon. And General Landry wanted to be sure we're not Goa'ulds or Orii or whatever. But Galen wouldn't have it. Just told them that he'd not let anyone touch himself, didn't need any medical help, and that was that. He only managed to make them drop it when he pulled the healer card. Told them that he might be the only hope there was for Daniel. They were desperate enough to accept that and let him work on a cure."  
  
Doctor Lam and General Landry. All the right people were here, and they were acting just like he'd expect them to. So, maybe they really had made it to the right universe.  
  
"Did Carter say anything about this place? If we are where we should be?"  
  
"She was pretty convinced this is your universe. Everything's just like it should be."  
  
"Except for Jackson. And myself. I should be there."   
  
Mitchell sat up and flung his feet over the edge of the bed. The room swayed a little, but settled down in a while. There was that stupid IV in his arm. He pried away the tape, pulled tube out, and pressed the spot with his fingers to stop any bleeding.  
  
"I'm sure the nurses will be really happy about that," Eilerson noted.  
  
"I guess I've got to run, then, before they notice."  
  
Mitchell got up on wobbly feet. It took some effort before he could make then cooperate completely, but he'd had much worse than this. When Eilerson surprised him for the second time, offering an arm for support, Mitchell shook his head. He'd do just fine, thank you very much. Nevertheless, Eilerson followed close by when he approached the door. The guards saluted and smiled at him, and opened the door.  
  
"By the way, do you have any idea of where you're going?"  
  
"Some." Well, Mitchell really couldn't know which isolation room they'd picked. "Not really."  
  
"Just follow me, then," Eilerson offered generously.  
  
Mitchell tried to brace himself for what he'd have to face. The fact that Jackson was still grievously ill even though they were back, and the rest of them were going to be fine. He wondered if Jack O'Neill was there. He'd surely be mad at Mitchell. SG-1 had been his team since the beginning, and even now that it wasn't, Mitchell couldn't just ignore that. But Mitchell could take O'Neill's anger, since he was every bit as angry at himself. Sure, Jackson had begged to get to do the walls before he'd been hit by the needles, but it had clearly been Mitchell's decision to let him do it.  
  
Jackson wasn't in an isolation room, but in a private one. The team working to find a way to defeat the virus was somewhere else. This was just one small room with Jackson, O'Neill and a couple of nurses.  
  
No amount of thinking could've prepared Mitchell for the sight he faced. Sure, he'd seen Jackson in the infirmary more often than he could ever have expected since he'd started leading the team, but it'd never been anything like this.   
  
Mitchell had thought he'd had a good collection of things on himself when he'd been stuck in the hospital after that crash in the Antarctic. Jackson clearly broke his record. Or maybe it just looked like there was a lot of stuff, because the tubes with blood stood out so clearly. Blood coming and going. And it wasn't just in the tubes. Jackson's face only had tiny red spots, but his arms were covered with what looked like spectacular bruises. O'Neill was wiping his face, carefully clearing the remains of yet another nosebleed from above the tubing in his mouth.  
  
Mitchell approached silently, walking to the side of the bed across from O'Neill. Eilerson stayed at the doorway. Wise move from him, Mitchell gave him that.  
  
He couldn't think of much of anything to say, so he found a chair and sat down.  
  
He'd never seen O'Neill like this. His face was so pale that Mitchell thought he looked sick too. Sick from worry.  
  
"See what happens when I turn my back for a couple of weeks," O'Neill said softly. It wasn't really an accusation. More like regret. Blaming himself.  
  
Couple of weeks. That brought one important question to Mitchell's mind. "I've just got to ask... How long were we away?"  
  
"You don't know? About three days. Two and a half. They only called me after the first 24 hours had passed. Next time, they'll know better."  
  
Two and a half. Mitchell had counted a full four days in there. Of course, they'd probably traveled in time when they'd returned from wherever they'd been when they'd managed to open the walls. But if Galen and the ship could put them in the right time and the right universe so very near perfectly, why had they lost a day and a half? Two and a half days... That was exactly when they'd first gone through the Veraeda. Sometime in the afternoon during the third day. So they had returned just after they'd left.  
  
If they could've just gone another day back in time and inside those walls so he could've stopped Jackson from getting the needles.  
  
"This is all my fault, you know."  
  
"You're the team leader now, Mitchell. When something happens to any of them, it'll always be your fault. At least in your opinion. Mine too. I can't say I'm not mad at you. I am mad at you. All of you. But still, Daniel's going to make it," he said in a tone that told Mitchell'd better not challenge that.  
  
And he had no reason to. "He is. Of course he is."  
  
"He woke up for a while, after they'd managed to, well, stabilize him somewhat, if that's is what you call this."  
  
"He did?"  
  
"Yeah. And he said enough. What he said... I got the picture that he was stuck in the time when he... ascended. Then Lam sedated him. A moment later they had to hook him up to that thing," he waved at the ventilator.  
  
Mitchell frowned. Of course, he knew the whole story. Jackson had ascended some three years ago. He'd died of a lethal dose of radiation, after he'd probably saved all the people on the planet Kelowna.  
  
"I really hate that idea. I loathe it. Really," O'Neill added, shaking his head.  
  
It certainly wasn't a very positive image to go on. To compare this with the previous time Jackson had died. And if Jackson himself felt bad enough to confuse the incidents, that didn't sound too good either.  
  
They both fell silent again. But the room around them wasn't silent. Mitchell actually liked hearing all the beeps and buzzes and hums. And it wasn't just that they told that Jackson was still alive. The Dodecagon had always been too silent. He didn't want to hear a silence like that ever again.  
  
"You never get used to it, do you?" he said absently. "Having to do decisions that can cause things like this."  
  
"Can't say you do," O'Neill's reply was even more absent, all his attention on Jackson.  
  
A sudden loud voice from the PA cut the not-so-silent silence between them, accompanied by the general alarm sound.  
  
"Unauthorized gate activation!"  
  
Mitchell and O'Neill gazed at each other over the bed. They were thinking the same thing.  
  
O'Neill put a hand on Jackson's forehead and stroked his hair back. Mitchell just laid a hand on Jackson's shoulder.  
  
"We'll be back in a moment," Mitchell said, to both Jackson and O'Neill.  
  
"So, don't go anywhere," O'Neill added, addressing just Jackson.  
  
They ran out of the room. Eilerson wasn't anywhere to be seen. Mitchell hadn't noticed when he'd left.  
  
They reached the stargate control room just in time to see the gateship of the Duodecim dive into the open wormhole.  
  
Both Carter and Harriman were staring at the computer screens and looking desperate. The screens were black. All of them. They showed none of the normal gate operation programs. And Landry looked like he was about to explode.  
  
"What the hell just happened?" O'Neill asked, before Mitchell'd managed to wrap his mind around what'd just taken place. "Who was flying that thing?"  
  
"Galen. And Eilerson was with him," Carter replied, sounding like she could hardly believe what she was saying.  
  
"What? No!" Mitchell certainly couldn't believe it. "The double-crossing, self-centered... shit! After all we went through together, they steal our ship and run?"  
  
"And we haven't even counted yet how many guards they knocked out or injured, not to mention they somehow froze all the computer systems on base," Landry shouted. "Some friends you made out there!"  
  
As soon as the General had finished, Harriman spoke timidly, pointing at the screen in front of him. "Sirs - look at this."  
  
A miniature version of Galen, with a set of flaming, demonic wings, had walked into the computer screen. He looked sad. A message wrote itself in fiery letters against the black background.  
  
 _I apologize. There was no other way. If all goes well, we shall not meet again._  
  
"Yes, I certainly hope so too!" Landry commented.  
  
"Where did they go? What was the address they dialed?" Mitchell asked.  
  
"The Dodecagon. They stole the Ancient GDO as well. I don't know how they knew the address, and I can't imagine why they'd want to go there... Even if they can somehow open the walls from the outside, I don't think they can use the Veraeda to go back, unless something's changed since we left," Carter answered.   
  
Mitchell agreed. He'd never, ever want to go back there, even if they could. Without that GDO, they'd never get through the shielding on the Dodecagon's stargate, so he'd not need to worry about that.  
  
The words disappeared from the screen, and more followed. The image of Galen had crossed his arms and started pacing around, looking impatient.  
  
 _Well, why are you still there? What are you waiting for?  
  
_ Mitchell looked at Carter, who looked at O'Neill, who shrugged. How where they supposed to know what Galen meant?  
  
A second later, the phone rang. At least the phone lines weren't dead. Landry picked it up.  
  
"Landry," he answered.  
  
"...Oh?" his eyebrows went up. Everyone else had fallen silent, staring at him.  
  
"We'll be there right away."  
  
He put the phone down and explained, "It was Doctor Lam. It seems Galen left us a parting gift. An antiviral drug, or at least that's what he says it is. The real question is, are we complete idiots if we still trust him enough to try it on Doctor Jackson?"

* * *

  
Daniel was lying on his back on the floor with his eyes closed, too tired and sick to do anything else.  
  
He knew where he was. If he'd open his eyes, he'd see the white, glowing ceiling and the twelve dark stone walls surrounding him, each of them carved with an alien text he had never encountered before and could not hope to translate.  
  
It was completely silent. There was no one else here. The others had left, escaped through the Veraeda, and they had left him behind, to die all alone.  
  
He was alone in the Dodecagon.  
  
Something fell on his face. Something wet. Another something touched his hand.   
  
The barely audible sound of falling rain broke the silence.  
  
He opened his eyes.  
  
The ceiling was no longer white. It was spotted crimson, and the spots would drip and fall down on him, on the floor, on the tables, on the Veraeda, like rain, except that it wasn't rainwater. It was blood. His own. He knew that. How he could be sure, he couldn't tell. How it was possible, he couldn't understand, but it was.  
  
The light rain fell slowly from the ceiling, sliding down the walls, covering the floor with a red film. It felt cool against his burning skin.  
  
He screamed.   
  
The sound echoed in the room, repeated endlessly from the walls, but there was no one around to hear it.

* * *

  
Lam looked a bit disheveled. A few strands of hair had escaped her usually neat ponytail, and she seemed really confused.  
  
"What happened, exactly?" Landry asked her.  
  
"I don't know. I turned my back to him, and the next thing I knew, I woke up from the floor. Galen knocked me out, and I don't know how. I'm pretty sure he didn't hit me, though. And when I got up, I saw this on the table, and that on the screen," she showed, pointing to a vial on the table, and a computer screen with a model of a molecule. It was probably the only screen in the base that wasn't black right now.  
  
"And that's supposed to cure Daniel?" O'Neill sounded anxious.  
  
"When I took a closer look at the screen, a mini-Galen with wings entered it and told me in fiery letters that he had figured it out, and that this was what we had been looking for. The only things the computer will show are this screen, and then a simulation of this antiviral working against the Ancient virus. But it's a simulation that's entirely Galen's work as well. And if what I hear about what happened is true, I really don't know if that's to be trusted..."  
  
Mitchell had a pretty strong opinion on that. "We can't trust him. He was a bit like the Orii in it that we'd never get a straight answer from him. He did help us a lot in there, but we can't know what his real goals were, and whether he actually did all he could. I don't think we can even be sure he really was out and unconscious that long all those times we went through the Veraeda. He could've been faking it all."  
  
"I've got to agree. We just can't be sure. I was perfectly ready to trust him, but just taking the gateship like that, without even trying to reason about it... I don't like what that tells about him. Still, I can't see what he'd get out of hurting Daniel more, when he's already..." Carter couldn't finish, just shook her head. She was right about that. Mitchell hadn't heard what Lam's medical opinion was, but from what he'd seen and the way people talked about Jackson, it seemed like he wasn't going to make it, unless they'd figure out something really fast.  
  
"I can test whatever's in that vial, see if it really is what we were looking for, but it's going to take a while."  
  
"How long? You think Daniel's going to... to last long enough?" O'Neill asked.  
  
"I don't know. I honestly don't know. It'll take several hours to be sure if this really is what we think it is and if it's really going to do any good. I can't tell if he'll live that long. His kidneys have already failed, so we had to put him on dialysis. Sooner or later, and I'm afraid it'll be sooner, his heart will fail as well. And even if everything is fine and this turns out to be a working antiviral drug, it might come too late. It's not going to magically heal everything that's wrong with him. It just might give him a fighting chance."  
  
"And that's all he needs. Just shut up, stop wasting time and start testing the damn thing," O'Neill said heatedly. Those weren't the words Mitchell would've picked, but he shared the feelings. Standing here and talking was certainly not going to help.  
  
Lam looked slightly hurt, but didn't say anything, just picked up the vial and turned to Carter. "Sam, I could use someone else's opinion on this as well. Someone's who's actually here, in addition to all the specialists I can call."  
  
"Sure... " Carter answered, sounding a bit hesitant. She didn't really want to be here. She wanted to be by Jackson's side, just like the rest of them.  
  
"And Cameron, I know you're going to be stubborn, so I'll let it pass for now. The least you can do is change your clothes. I'll get back to you later," Lam told Mitchell.  
  
It took him a while to get what she meant. He looked down at himself. Right. He was still wearing infirmary scrubs. He'd forgotten about that completely. Maybe he'd change, but he'd do it really quickly. There were more important things to worry about.

* * *

  
Daniel knew he was dreaming. He knew this couldn't be true. He had realized it when the blood covering the floor, his blood, had risen high enough to reach his ears. This was absurd. This couldn't be happening. No human had this much blood in them.  
  
He knew he was caught in a nightmare so gruesome that he couldn't believe he had come up with something like it. Still, he couldn't see how to wake up and come out of it.  
  
The surface was rising slowly, and he was stuck, frozen on the floor, unable to move. He would drown in this absurd amount of his own blood that wasn't real.  
  
There had to be a reality, a real world, somewhere around him. What it was, he couldn't tell. Was he really in the Dodecagon? Was he truly alone?  
  
The blood had reached his cheeks, covered him almost completely.  
  
He couldn't get up, couldn't move. All he could do was panic.   
  
This wasn't true. This wasn't happening. He was imagining it all. It was a nightmare.   
  
He couldn't wake up.  
  
He felt the liquid flowing into his nostrils.  
  
He was drowning.

* * *

  
Mitchell had changed clothes as fast as was humanly possible. Before he'd got to Jackson's room, Lam ran past him, practically shoved him aside and rushed in.  
  
Carter came right on her tail, and Mitchell followed them. This could be good, or then really bad.  
  
It wasn't good.  
  
Lam had picked up the defibrillator paddles from a medic that Mitchell didn't know.  
  
"Charging to 300 - Clear!"  
  
Mitchell had heard from Lam herself that last time, when Mitchell and Teal'c had destroyed the Ancient communication device, Jackson had woken up the fraction of a second before she'd set the paddles on his chest. This time, he didn't.  
  
It did the trick nevertheless, or at least the monitor that had been alarming started beeping as usual again.  
  
Only now Mitchell took in everything in the room, Carter standing next to him, O'Neill at Jackson's side as if he'd never left, and Teal'c at the doorway, still wearing scrubs.  
  
"That's it," Lam said, when she had put the paddles away and given instructions to the nurses. Now she was gazing at the monitors. "We don't have time for any more tests. Whatever's in that vial, if it's going to help, it's his only hope. It can't possibly make things any worse."  
  
Teal'c stepped away from the door and stood aside to give her room, as she ran out again.  
  
"It's going to work. Everything's looked promising so far. We're just being paranoid. We've wasted time for nothing. There's no reason why it wouldn't work," Carter muttered.  
  
"I too believe Galen sincerely wanted to help Daniel Jackson," Teal'c stated. Someone had already filled him in on what had happened.  
  
Landry entered the room, and Lam came in right after him, carrying a syringe. She took the cap off and injected its contents into one of the many tubes connected to Jackson.  
  
"When are we going to know if it did any good?" Mitchell asked softly.  
  
"Well, since it's not really going to destroy the virus, only stop it from replicating further... I don't know. If he survives the next few hours, I think we might be getting somewhere."  
  
"At least it didn't instantly make him worse. That's got to mean something," O'Neill said.  
  
They fell silent. A few hours. They had a tedious wait ahead of them.

* * *

  
Daniel was still lying on his back, but the blood was gone. It had disappeared in a bright flash that had left him feeling liquid. Someone had activated the Veraeda, though he had been all alone.  
  
He gazed at the glowing, white ceiling again. The universe might be different, but the Dodecagon was always the same.  
  
Afraid that the nightmarish rain would start again, he closed his eyes.  
  
Despite the panic that still threatened to engulf him, he fell asleep.

* * *

  
Mitchell, Carter and Teal'c sat in a row against the wall of the room. O'Neill had kept his place right at the side of Jackson's bed. Lam wouldn't have the rest of them there, since she and her staff needed some room to work.  
  
Mitchell had long ago lost count of how many times he'd watched Lam check all the monitors and then take Jackson's vitals by herself. When she had finished, she'd turn to offer them a shrug and an uncertain look. Then O'Neill would ask her what she thought, as if he hadn't seen her expression, and she'd tell that they had to wait longer.  
  
Mitchell hardly paid any attention to it when she moved in to do it once again. It felt like they were caught in a weird time loop of some kind, with Lam repeating her actions at set intervals, and the rest of them saying the same words, doing the same gestures over and over again.  
  
He peered at his watch. They'd been sitting here for five hours. Every now and then, one of them had left to fetch them coffee or something to eat, but aside from that and going to the bathroom, they'd not moved at all.   
  
Jackson was still alive, and he hadn't crashed again after that one time before they'd given him Galen's antiviral thing. He looked just like he'd looked when Mitchell had first seen him in this room. Of course, Mitchell couldn't imagine how he could look any worse than that.  
  
Lam had finished her round, hung her stethoscope around her neck and turned to face her audience.   
  
This time, she gave them a vague smile.  
  
"Well?" O'Neill asked, as usual.  
  
"I think it's working. I guess we've got to thank Galen after all."

* * *

  
Daniel was lying on his back with his eyes closed, too sick and tired to move.  
  
He knew where he was. If he'd open his eyes, he'd see the white, glowing ceiling and the twelve dark stone walls surrounding him, each of them carved with a text he couldn't hope to understand.  
  
He opened his eyes.  
  
The ceiling wasn't glowing. It was white, but it wasn't glowing. It looked familiar. He had seen it before, many times, but not in the Dodecagon.  
  
As his mind slowly started to take in the surroundings, he noticed that something was really off about the way he was breathing. Or rather, the way he wasn't breathing himself. It felt vaguely distressing. He wasn't doing anything at all, but air was flowing in at regular intervals. His mouth felt odd - something was in it, going through it, down his throat. This was different from everything he'd felt before.  
  
He tried to lift his head slightly, and found that he could actually do it.   
  
He looked ahead, and saw it all. Himself. The wires, the tubes and the blood, flowing into him and away from him and he didn't even want to know where it was going or where it came from. He couldn't stand it. Though he was still in the room, still here, still in the present, the memory of the Dodecagon and his blood falling on him like rain was too strong.  
  
His head fell back on the pillow and he closed his eyes tightly. Suddenly, the thing in his mouth, the fact that he wasn't breathing on his own, became more than odd and annoying. It was frightening. He tried to fight against it, tried to breathe faster, tried to cough, anything to get away from it.  
  
"Daniel?" a voice cut through to his thoughts. "Danny, it's all right, just relax." It was Jack's voice. He remembered hearing it before, not long ago, but he had thought it had been a dream, a hopeful hallucination when he'd been alone in the Dodecagon.  
  
Alone in the Dodecagon, drowning in blood, God, he couldn't breathe-  
  
Bits and pieces of conversation filtered through to his panicking mind.  
  
"Doc, I think he's-"  
  
"-shouldn't be happening - coming around too soon-"  
  
"Daniel, can you hear me-"  
  
"-so much sedatives and painkillers in his system already - can't possibly give more than-"  
  
"-switching to SIMV-"  
  
He tried to move his hands, maybe he could tear off some of the things, get away from it all, but he couldn't move, strong hands were keeping him in his place, and he was unable to do anything but struggle feebly, try to twist his body-  
  
Something had changed about breathing, he was getting some air when he tried to do it himself, but it still felt wrong.  
  
He wanted to yell at those people who were talking, tell them to do something, but he couldn't-  
  
"-this is what we're going to do - ready at hand-"  
  
"Doctor, that's... - you sure? - I don't-"  
  
"What you think doesn't matter, it's my call. Daniel? I'm going to take the tube out, but I can't do it if you're not with me in this."  
  
Daniel heard that. Yes, he wanted to get it out. He would do whatever to get there. He fought to get in control of his body, and forced his head to move in a nod.  
  
Someone was lifting the back of his bed so he was almost sitting up.  
  
"All right, are you ready? This is going to feel a bit nasty-"  
  
Daniel just nodded again. Just do it already.  
  
Then someone was tugging at the thing in his mouth, and there was the disgusting sensation of that long tube sliding up and out, and he coughed and gagged and was sure he'd suffocate-  
  
And then it was over. "Well done, Daniel! That's it," that Doctor was speaking to him again - Lam - Carolyn Lam, that was her name, he knew that. She was the new chief medical officer at the SGC.   
  
He was at the SGC. In the infirmary.  
  
Someone pressed an oxygen mask over his face, and he breathed in greedily. On his own. Though his throat felt like sandpaper, this was much, much better than before.  
  
"Everything looks good - he's stabilizing. Looks like you might've made the right call after all. My apologies, ma'am," someone said a bit farther away, the same voice that had protested to Lam earlier. Daniel recognized it as well. It was one of the oldest nurses, an experienced one who always seemed to know more than anyone else and had an opinion on everything.  
  
"Get a chest X-ray, we've got to check he didn't displace anything when he was thrashing around," Lam told her in a lower voice, but Daniel heard it nevertheless. He tried to ignore it. He didn't want to know why and what there'd be in his chest that he could've displaced.  
  
But he was anxious to know where he really was, and when, and what had happened to everyone, and he still couldn't speak with a mask over his mouth. He opened his eyes again and tried to move, just a bit, just to show them that he was still here.  
  
Jack was right next to him, so low that he had to be sitting. He looked around, and saw someone else, looking taller, standing at the other side of his bed. Another man. Mitchell.  
  
"It's all right. We're back at the SGC. Our SGC, our place, our time, our universe, and everything's fine," Mitchell told him. "Sam and Teal'c are fine, I'm fine, and you're going to be fine too."  
  
No mention of Galen or Max. Daniel frowned.  
  
"Oh, and Galen and Eilerson have left already. Got enough of this place, I guess. Can't say what they were up to, since they never told us, but I'm sure they're fine too."

* * *

  
"So, yeah, basically they just stole the gateship and went through the gate back to the Do..." Mitchell was explaining to Jackson. They both flinched when he started to say the name, so he quickly changed it to, "back to that place."  
  
"I can't believe it," Jackson shook his head.   
  
He was looking a lot better now. He was still pale, his hands and face still carrying the occasional spot or bruise, but he was on his own, finally. During the last few days, they'd gradually removed every single tube with blood, leaving just a regular IV fluid thing and a few wires and monitors.  
  
"I couldn't believe it either, at first. But I saw it with my own eyes. I knew it all along that trusting them wasn't smart. On the other hand, you wouldn't be here now, without Galen's help."  
  
"But we had to trust them. We didn't have much other choice. Anyway, it wasn't just because of him that we survived. You were the one who kept the whole operation in order. Took the lead."  
  
"Yeah, and I think we'd all have gone stir crazy without Teal'c's constant, steady and very sane presence, and if Sam hadn't figured out we could use the gateship, we'd never have gotten out - and most of all, it was you and Eilerson who managed to open the walls, and without that, none of the rest would've mattered. That's what I call teamwork. SG-1's always been the model example of it."  
  
"So, we're going to be SG-1 again," Jackson sounded a bit hesitant about that.  
  
"I'd like that. If you're all okay with it."  
  
O'Neill had just left back to the Pentagon. He could only take so many days off on personal grounds. For a moment, they'd had the old SG-1 right here, and Mitchell had once again witnessed the strong bonds between those four. He'd become more certain than ever that there was no way anyone could imagine he was actually going to replace O'Neill. He'd do things his own way. He wanted to lead SG-1, and after this ordeal, he thought he might be able to handle it, too.  
  
"Right. I think I'll just rest a few more days before our first off-world mission..."  
  
"Right, Jackson. Lam says at least two weeks before you can get back on active duty."

* * *

  
The second he heard the approaching footsteps, Daniel looked up from the book he was reading. It was that nurse again. The one who'd take the blood sample. He shivered at the idea.  
  
He'd spent a whole week in the infirmary. The first days were a complete haze, he'd been unconscious or asleep most of the time, too sick to do anything at all. Still, he couldn't forget the nightmares, and he couldn't stand seeing blood. His blood, flowing out of his body...  
  
As the nurse stuck the needle into his arm, he closed his eyes tightly and concentrated, tried really hard to think of something else. Of course, when she moved in to take his vitals, she had to note, as usual, that his pulse was a bit fast and BP a bit high. Not like he didn't know it. Just the thought of having blood drawn made him nervous. More than that, downright scared. He saw it was ridiculous, childish, and that was why he didn't even say it to her.  
  
The nightmares would still come to him, every single night. Not just about the blood, but about the walls as well. The twelve walls around him. They weren't closing in, weren't moving, just stood there. He was trapped inside and couldn't get out. He'd wake up in the middle of the night, trembling all over. And then he'd see the four walls around him here, and wouldn't feel any better. Two weeks in here. A whole week left. So, when he'd be physically all right and they'd let him out, he'd be a total wreck mentally.  
  
The nurse left. She'd report it all to Lam, and the next time Lam would come to see him, she'd ask if he wanted to talk about it. He didn't wan't to. They'd just call MacKenzie or some other shrink he didn't want to meet.  
  
He gazed at the book again, but a second set of footsteps announced another arrival. He wondered if the nurse had forgotten something. Annoyed, he turned to look.  
  
It wasn't the nurse. It was Jack.  
  
"Dannyboy. How's it going?"  
  
"Great, Jack. And good to see you."  
  
"Great. That's great! I heard the latest from Lam, and she thinks you're doing great too. Told me that there'll be no lasting effects from this after all. The last time I saw her - what was it, five days ago? - she was half worried you'd need a kidney transplant or something."  
  
"I never heard that."  
  
"I told her not to tell you."  
  
"Ja-ack..."  
  
"Anyway, she was so happy that I managed to convince her to let you out for a bit."  
  
"Out? As in, to the cafeteria? Or, out-out? Really, out of the SGC?"  
  
"That. Out of doors."  
  
"I can't believe she allowed that."  
  
"Oh, she gave me a pretty impressive list of do's and don't's. But in general, she thought it'd be good for you."  
  
"She's not forcing me to take a wheelchair, is she?"  
  
"You think you're up to walking? Just a bit?"  
  
"Sure. I've walked to the bathroom and back a few times already... Right. So I might not be up to a hike, but I don't want to be pushed around like I can't take care of myself... I'm not that sick anymore, Jack. Honestly."  
  
"So, you'll just sit in the chair until we're out of here. It's not like I'm not going to follow her list to the letter. Just don't tell her."  
  
Daniel's best guess would be that they'd be going to Jack's cabin, though he couldn't imagine how Lam could've allowed such a trip. Once they were topside, they got into Jack's car, and started driving. And Jack wouldn't tell where they were going.  
  
"It's a surprise," he said. "But it's not far."  
  
Daniel watched the landscapes they were passing. It was wonderful to be out of the infirmary. Wonderful to be out just in general. Out, where there were no walls anywhere near him. They took a few turns he'd not anticipated, driving into a direction he couldn't figure out.  
  
They ended up following a small dirt road through a forest. By the time they got wherever it was, it was starting to get dark outside. And they were still in the middle of the woods.  
  
Jack helped Daniel out of the car. His feet welt so weak that he had to lean on Jack for support. It was embarrassing, but it was better than a wheelchair. Not that they'd have done anything with wheels here anyway, considering the narrow trail where Jack was leading him.  
  
"Jack, please - where are we going?"  
  
"We're almost there, don't worry."  
  
Good thing that they were almost there. Daniel was getting exhausted already, out of breath, though they were walking slowly. After a few more steps, he had to ask for Jack's help again, so they went on even more slowly, Daniel's arm around Jack's shoulders.  
  
He saw a light shining through the trees, and a moment later, they entered a small opening in the forest. A camp fire was lit in the middle of it, and around it sat three people - Sam, Teal'c and Cam. As soon as they saw Daniel and Jack, they cheered, and started talking, all at the same time.  
  
"Way to go, Jackson! Welcome back."  
  
"I hope you are not overly exhausted, Daniel Jackson?"  
  
"Daniel! How was the trip?"  
  
"Hey, all," Daniel answered timidly, and sat down by the fire as well.  
  
"We figured out you'd appreciate a moment outdoors. Out of walls," Mitchell added, as an explanation of sorts.  
  
"I really do. Thanks, guys."  
  
Could they possibly know what he'd been thinking? About the nightmares? The feeling that he was trapped inside? He could imagine they might feel something like it too. All of them except Jack. But Jack might've guessed anyway.

* * *

  
They spent a few hours just sitting around the fire, talking, eating a bit - Lam had given strict orders on what Jackson must and must not eat, but they ignored most of it. Figured out that if he'd survived the Dodecagon, he'd survive O'Neill's camp cookings too. But he did skip Mitchell's chili. Told him that if it was strong enough to make Teal'c's hair stand on end, he wouldn't touch it. That was slightly exaggerated, of course, but Mitchell was cool with it anyway.  
  
They made a huge show of wrapping and tucking Daniel in his sleeping bag, with extra blankets close at hand in case it'd get cold. They even forced him to wear a woolly hat and a scarf.  
  
Somewhere along it all, Mitchell realized he'd stopped thinking of the others as "the SG-1" as opposed to himself. The first time when Jackson had almost died in the Dodecagon - so long ago, and still, less than two weeks - Mitchell had felt like an outsider. He'd stood away and let Carter and Teal'c take care of Jackson. Now, he was fussing about taking care of Jackson together with the rest of them, just as overly protective as everyone else.  
  
He didn't know if the others saw it that way, but he felt like he was a part of this family now.  
  
They stayed awake and watched over Jackson and waited. It didn't take long before he fell asleep, a vague smile on his lips.  
  
O'Neill turned to look at Mitchell and gave him a conspirative wink. Carter and Teal'c nodded.  
  
"So, welcome to the gang, Cam," O'Neill told him.  
  
So, it wasn't just him. They welcomed him to the family, too.

* * *

  
Daniel slept soundly for the first time since they'd gotten out. No nightmares. No walls.  
  
He knew that if he'd open his eyes, he'd see the wide night sky, sprinkled with stars, and the trees, continuing in every direction, the forest everywhere around him, full of life, and his friends, his family, right next to him.  
  
They'd tried to say it to him before - he couldn't even count all the times Jack had sat at his bedside and told him that "Everything's going to be all right". Now, he could finally believe it himself.  
  
Everything was all right.


End file.
